


Second Movement

by Deannie



Series: The Silence In Between [3]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: All the season two eps, Angst, F/M, Sex, blatant hurt/comfort, but only in chapter five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 58,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21998776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: Growth is pain. For everyone. But there is joy abounding, too.This is the story of the scenes you never see in season two.(I rhymed!)
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Series: The Silence In Between [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564306
Comments: 150
Kudos: 140





	1. Breathing Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "The Siege of Lothal", parts 1 and 2.

Alexsandr Kallus looked out the forward viewport of the _Relentless_ at the star destroyers around them. The tattered remains of the rebels’ main frigate had lost the last of its atmosphere hours ago and now hung in space, a charred hulk. They’d seen a number of escape pods launch at the height of Lord Vader’s attack and he had to assume that most of the crew had been picked up by the support crafts and spirited away. Bits of fighter ships floated in the jetsam. Those people, of course, hadn’t had the chance for rescue.

Like the crew who manned this ship, those rebels had made their choice. The wrong one, as it turned out. Lord Vader had been masterful in his manipulation of the rebel fleet and now their flagship was dust, their squadron of fighters decimated, and they were likely licking their wounds and moaning their fate.

He knew exactly how painful, how debilitating, losing troops was. He’d been there before, broken and lost as a result of the utter destruction. But while he and his men had simply been doing their job, these rebels had caused the chaos. They'd brought it on themselves.

That chaos had begun, not with the death of Tua, of course—she was little more than a useless civil servant who, in dying, had finally found her calling as a rallying cry to foment division between the “freedom fighters” and “the people” they were trying to free. No, the chaos had begun when they had tried to make those people care. Tried, and in too many cases, succeeded. At least for the amount of time it took to quash the burgeoning seeds of sedition.

And then to come back for Kanan Jarrus? To launch that kind of a rescue for one man had been utter folly. That in itself had called down the formidable power of the Empire, and deservedly so. To allow the government to show cracks, to allow those cracks to be exploited? That was how the Republic had fallen, wasn’t it? 

The door to the war room swished open behind him, and Alexsandr could almost feel Lord Vader moving forward, the sound of his breathing apparatus loud in the frightened quiet. The Dark Lord brought fear with him, always a powerful motivator. In a single campaign, Vader had extinguished the guttering spark of rebellion on Lothal, laid waste to the rebels, and strengthened the might of the Empire. All through one simple emotion.

Alexsandr knew that Governor Tarkin didn’t believe in the Force, in the power of the Jedi and the Darkness. But Alexsandr did. He’d seen the Jedi in action, at home on Coruscant. When he was young he had idolized them—until he’d realized that the Jedi were the _reason_ for the war in the first place. A powerful, corrupt, ancient and outdated group that held too much power to be easily deposed. It was lucky that the army had strength in numbers to overpower them.

Vader certainly frightened _him_ , his power greater than that of any Jedi Alexsandr had seen, but at least he understood the single dark lord’s use to the greater Empire. Like the Grand Inquisitor and his disciples, Vader was a precision tool to cut out the rot that Jedi inevitably created. The swell of hope and rebellion that made people work against the common good in search of something “better.”

Order was better. Solidarity was better. Sedition and divisiveness worked against them all.

“The _Relentless_ will remain in the area,” Lord Vader announced. “I will return to Mustafar.”

“As you order, Lord Vader,” he agreed.

The Dark Lord turned, his cape swirling as he walked toward the back of the ship.

“I don’t understand why the Emperor sent _him_ in the first place,” Konstantine fussed.

Alexsandr smiled at the man’s ignorance. “Of course you don’t,” he replied.

 _Which is why_ I _will be left standing at the end of all of this, and you will not._

*************

Zeb stood at the edge of the landing bay of _Alion Strength_ , one of the surviving, undamaged frigates. The space around them was empty, at the moment. What few fighters they had left were under repairs here, and on the _Liberator_. That one was the command ship now, and Sato was setting himself up there, though the little corvette would never match the old Pelta they’d lost.

In the day or so since they’d reached Safe Haven, they’d counted their missing dead, wrapped or burned the bodies they had, and consigned them to the black or launched them into the nearest atmosphere.

_So many ways to honor those no longer with us._

His own people, like Ezra’s, went into the ground, if it was possible. Out here, when he died, the soil of Lasan would not be where his bones met the universe.

“Are you okay?”

Zeb turned away from the darkness to face Hera. She was as exhausted as the rest of them.

“Yeah.”

“Zeb, I’m sorry about Jak.” She put her hand on his arm, the leather of her flight gloves slicking itself along his fur.

He nodded, remembering the human pilot with whom he’d struck up a friendship on that fateful mission months ago. “If it wasn’t a war before,” he muttered, “it certainly is now.”

“And I’ll tell you the same thing I told Kanan,” she said, all the verve of a leader in her voice, but tempered by the caring of a friend. “We’ll fight it together.”

Zeb looked back to the darkness, content that a friend was sharing the view now. 

Together was the only way, wasn’t it? Nothing more to say to that.

**********

Ahsoka had found that the back end of the landing bay in any ship of a decent size was the best place to practice with her sabers. Today, after all that had happened, all that she’d felt and seen, she couldn’t bring herself to light them, but went through her forms silently, without the augmentation of the kyber crystals’ songs.

She contemplated that TIE fighter: the way the pilot flew, the way the pilot _felt_. What she thought simply couldn’t be. What she’d felt was wrong. Her master was dead, like nearly all the Jedi. Because if he lived…

“Master Billaba would have approved of your style.”

The soft words startled her. She hadn’t felt Kanan coming, but now that she was aware of him, she took a moment to read him. 

The human was exhausted, understandably. And worried, frightened, grieving, hiding…

_The anger. The fear. The hate._

“Master Billaba thought I was sloppy,” she retorted mildly, trying to focus on the now. On the man in front of her. He could be a greater help to this rebel cell than he realized, if only he would let go of his past.

Even with that, he was stronger than most. If he were a different man, he would have gone a very different way in this half year. If he had had to keep to the strictures of the Jedi’s ways, without the love of those who had, literally, kept him safe from himself.

She remembered walking through the fields of Maridun, Master Secura by her side as they tried desperately to find help for Anakin as he lay dying...

“I can still sense your worry for Anakin, your attachment to him.” Secura had been so calm. On an unknown planet, another Jedi dying by inches behind them, little hope of rescue. So calm.

Ahsoka had been anything but. "It's just--I get confused sometimes. It's forbidden for a Jedi to form attachments, yet we're supposed to be compassionate."

The dichotomy seemed lost on her companion. “It is nothing to be ashamed of, Ahsoka. I went through the same process when I was your age with my own master.”

“Really? You?” Secura was everything Ahsoka had thought a Jedi should be, back then.

"He was like a father to me,” the Twi’lek confirmed. “I realized that for the greater good, I had to let him go. Don't lose a thousand lives just to save one."

And yet, that was what they’d risked to save Kanan, while his own choice had always been to choose those thousand over himself. Even now, his bitterness didn’t keep him from helping his people, his family. It just poisoned him from within.

It was a fate no one deserved. 

“She should see you now,” Kanan replied.

Ahsoka stood down and smiled at him. He needed distraction. _So do I._

“Care to spar?”

He grinned. “Like old times?”

Ahsoka shook her head. “I would hope we’re both a little better now,” she quipped. “But I could make it easy on you. Just one saber, maybe?”

Kanan’s eyes flickered. “I’ve had experience fighting against double blades lately,” he replied steadily. “Let’s see how we both do.”

Ahsoka took a preparatory stance, Kanan doing the same. Their blades hummed to life and the Force wrapped around them, almost stifling for a moment, with all the emotions running through them both.

A deep breath, and she watched Kanan take the same—and then they engaged.

He was good. Better than a man who had been truly training for only a couple of years had the right to be.

 _He’s gotten a lot of practice lately,_ she reminded herself.

They weren’t evenly matched, by any stretch, but he surprised her a number of times—and himself as well, if the pleased grins she saw at intervals were any indication. By the time they stopped by silent mutual agreement, both were drenched in sweat.

“You never taught me _that_.” Ezra’s low comment drew a laugh from them both, and Ahsoka looked up to see that they’d drawn a crowd. 

A crowd that was less defeated than they had been an hour before. Ahsoka had seen the effect of the Jedi on beaten peoples before. Seen the very flash of a lightsaber cause a straightening of the spine. Raise hope when it was failing.

She hadn’t thought it could still do that.

“You’ll have to practice a lot more before you can fight like that,” Ahsoka told Ezra truthfully. “Kanan—” and still it was hard to remember to call him that when she spoke of the past “—was always good with a saber.”

“Yeah,” Ezra agreed, though his eyes were dark, and Ahsoka wondered whether he was remembering the Inquisitor or the Dark Lord. “Yeah. Seen him in action.”

“More than he wanted to,” Kanan murmured. If Ezra heard, he showed no sign.

“Ezra?” Hera’s voice over Ezra’s comm broke the moment.

“Yeah, Hera?” he replied, seeming almost glad to be saved from more discussion. 

“I need you at the _Ghost_ ,” she sounded irritated. And tired. “I believe I told you and Chopper to clean out the main manifolds?”

“Uh, yeah,” Ezra muttered, without engaging his comm. 

“Ring a bell?” Hera prompted.

Ezra hung his head and waved briefly to Kanan before making his way to the main corridor. “About that, Hera…” he began as he strode out of hearing range.

Kanan sighed, taking a seat on a crate nearby as the crowd around them dispersed. “She’s trying to keep them busy,” he explained. “Keep herself busy, too.”

Ahsoka nodded. “We just spent the last hour sparring for some other reason entirely, though.”

“Clearly,” he agreed with a smile.

They were alone now, and the silence was full of the chance to talk. “Did you decide to stay, or is the matter tabled?”

Kanan shook his head. “We have no choice now,” he replied. “ _I_ have no choice. Lothal is better off without us, thanks to Kallus. Hera is staying. Ezra is staying, and he’s the one the Dark Lord is really looking for.”

Ahsoka watched him carefully, reading the droop of his shoulders and the despair. 

“ _It’s my job to keep you safe, Snips._ While _teaching you.”_

Every master’s dilemma.

“Are you so sure of that?” she asked gently. So sure his own life wasn’t of importance here—to the Sith Lord or the rebellion?

“You know someone like Ezra poses… unique challenges to being taught,” he started carefully. Ahsoka tried hard not to think about the fact that Anakin had posed those same challenges, albeit he’d been younger than Ezra when Qui-Gon started training him. “He’s had years without guidance, and given that his training hasn’t exactly been othrodox…”

“You’re worried about what would happen should the Dark Lord capture him.” It was a legitimate concern, but she could feel clearly that his reasons for the concern were less valid than they could be.

“He felt him before I did,” Kanan finally said, as if confessing. He leaned forward on the crate, elbows on his knees and hands clasped before him. “Both times, in fact. I know Ezra’s powerful, but…”

“But you worry that he felt him first because of the darkness within Ezra himself?” Ahsoka didn’t smile. Poor Kanan, that he couldn’t see what was going on. _To be blind with eyes is the greatest trial_.

“Yes.”

She watched him, felt him, felt the wall in his mind that held back a child’s betrayal and fear, and a man’s growing bitterness. The same wall that had certainly dampened his ability to feel the Dark Lord on Lothal.

“Ezra isn’t the first to flirt with darkness, Kanan,” she reminded him. That presence in the TIE fighter dug at her, feeding her own fears, and she _would_ find the answers she sought. But right now, in this moment, this was about Kanan and his apprentice. 

_“The apprentice lives.”_

She closed her eyes a moment and strove for calm.

“I know,” Kanan said quietly. Falling silent again. Feeding the wall’s power.

“Bitterness, pain, disappointment,” Ahsoka said. “No matter how hidden they may be, they’re still a darkness.”

Kanan tilted his chin to look up at her. 

“An urn that holds the water in holds air out as well.” Was she going to have to spell this out for him?

He dropped his head again, staring at the floor panels.

“Breathe, Kanan,” she urged. “Let the air in.”

“I can’t,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Ezra—”

“Knows,” she assured him. “You aren’t hiding from anyone but yourself.”

“So what am I hiding?” he asked himself.

Ahsoka sighed. “Your fear that you cannot be who you are, instead of who you were.” She sat quietly on the crate beside him. “When I left the order, when everything was gone.... I had no idea what I should do. For a while I chose to hide. To try to live and forget.” Hedala appeared in her memory, the young girl causing her to smile. “But the will of the Force can't be cast aside for long. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing.”

“But can I stay here and do this?” Again, he wasn’t asking her.

“That’s a question you have to answer yourself.” She stood easily. “But bitterness that festers only feeds the darkness within. And with so much darkness with _out_ , you might consider draining the wound.”

Kanan neither moved nor opened his eyes, and the wall still stood. 

She’d done what she could. It was his decision to make, and she trusted him to make the right one. 

“We have a meeting with Commander Sato in an hour,” she said. “You might at least use the sonic in the ‘fresher before you come in.”

She just hoped he could make that right decision in time.

********

Kanan headed for the _Ghost_ , rather than use one of _Alion_ ’s refreshers. The walls were closing in. Less than they had been, certainly. Which was all Hera’s fault.

The Sith Lord had caused a shaking to begin in his chest, one he knew wouldn’t disappear any time soon. He hadn’t been lying to Ezra—this was a foe they could not match. Ever. It wasn’t a case of Kanan belittling his own skills, or Ezra’s, but the reality that a Sith Lord used every erg of the Dark Side. They had no light within them and as such, were beyond anyone’s beating. 

_Maybe Master Yoda…._

But then to see Tarkintown, to hear Ezra’s foolish, fearless declaration, and the pain when the boy understood that, yes, in a way they _had_ caused that. He tried to guide his apprentice as best he could, but lessons like this were simply painful. To know that, in trying to help, you inevitably caused harm as well, was difficult to swallow.

 _For grownups, too_ , he’d acknowledged. With their escape from Lothal, the crew had separated naturally, as much as they could in a shuttle the size of the one they’d stolen. Ezra did what he did and disappeared to think, Sabine and Zeb sat together but apart, available to each other for discussion if needed, but allowed their silence, too.

Kanan went to Hera. He needed comfort and safety and he knew it. He’d spent a lot of time lately running from himself, but the reality of what he and Ezra could face at the hands of the thing they’d fought….

“Are you all right?” Hera asked finally. There was an unwillingness in her voice. Entirely his own fault.

“No,” he responded truthfully. “But we don’t have time to deal with that now.”

Hera nodded. “We’ve made things worse,” she lamented softly.

“That’s what usually happens when you get involved.” The words had come from the blocked and hurting part of his soul, but he knew they were true. 

“If we hadn’t gotten involved, the Inquisitor would have found Ezra alone a long time ago.” She snorted a little bitterly. “He might even have found you eventually, in whatever bar you wound up passing out.”

Possibly. And Gorse and Cynda would have been wiped off the face of the galaxy. And Zeb, and Sabine, and worse and worse and worse...

“Getting involved is what makes things change, Kanan,” she whispered. “I know _this_ change isn’t what you planned on, but joining the rebellion doesn’t mean we stop helping people. It means we help _more_ of them.”

“When we’re not making things worse,” he muttered. He shifted in his chair at the cold look she shot him—then hissed in pain as the movement jarred his shoulder. The power of that blow when the Sith had slammed into his armor had all but dislocated the joint. Had he been bare-shouldered, he knew he wouldn’t have survived. He hooked his arm over the seat back, hoping to ease the pain.

“You should get it looked at,” Hera said, trying to smooth things over.

He was willing to try, too. “When we get back to the fleet,” he promised.

“Which is right about now.” She flipped over to the rebels’ communication scrambler. “ _Phoenix Home_ , this is _Ghost_ away team,” she announced, giving the fleet their agreed-upon code. And waiting…

“Your clearance code checks out,” Phoenix replied. “Welcome home.”

 _Funny,_ Kanan had thought. _It doesn’t feel like home._

And it still didn’t, but Hera had been right. They could still help here. And he’d been right in what he told Ahsoka, he _was_ stuck. Hera might be in command of the _Ghost,_ but the big decisions had always been up to all of them. Zeb and Hera and Ezra wanted to stay. He and Sabine were outvoted. 

He felt Ezra before he entered the _Ghost_ , and thoughts about Ahsoka brought up what she’d said about shielding Ezra. Ezra now was… confused. Irritated. Without conscious thought, Kanan sought him out.

Ezra’s feet were sticking out of the access panel at the back of the cargo area. 

“No, Chopper, Hera _doesn’t_ want me to do that myself. I’m not even _capable_ of doing that myself—” 

Chopper pointed out that Ezra and Kanan disobeyed the laws of physics on many occasions, so why should this be different?

“Because it’s reattaching a manifold coupling, not Force shoving stormtroopers,” Ezra bit back.

Chopper didn’t see how that had anything to do with it. _He_ used the same tool for different tasks all the time.

Kanan didn’t laugh, but Ezra clearly heard it anyway.

“Kanan, it isn’t funny.” 

Kanan watched the kid worm his way out of the crawlspace. “It is a little funny.”

Ezra shook his head. The irritation was waning, but he was still confused. His eyes lit with amusement though.

“Did you and Ahsoka fight like that at the Temple?” he teased with a smile.

Kanan found himself returning it with no trace of sadness. “We weren’t nearly as good back then.”

Of course he wasn’t, Chopper pointed out. That’s why he had that lightsaber scar on his ass.

“And I’m leaving,” Kanan announced.

As expected, Ezra followed. “Seriously, though,” he said as they topped the ladder and headed aft. “I haven’t seen you fight like that since…”

“Yeah,” Kanan replied, saving either of them from saying it. “I’ll need to be better if we’re going to face that Sith Lord again.”

Ezra’s eyes clouded. “Can’t we _not_ do that?” It seemed the longer Ezra had to think about that fight, the less he wanted a rematch. Thank the Force.

“That’s my plan,” Kanan agreed. He needed caf. And possibly something to eat. They had more than half an hour ‘til the meeting. He had time, right?

Except that there was still that confusion in Ezra’s mind. Niggling at him.

“What do you need, Ezra?” he asked, pulling down a mug as the caf started brewing.

“Do you really not want to be here?” 

Kanan took a breath before he answered, and that was too long for Ezra.

“Because I heard what you and Hera were talking about before we left for Lothal, and I just… I guess I don’t get it.”

Kanan poured his caf. If he was going to have this conversation, he _really_ needed it. “Don’t get what?”

“You said you didn’t want to fight another war. That part I _do_ get. But…” He took a minute to figure out what he wanted to say. “You and Hera… all of you—you taught me the meaning of ‘everyone’. Not me, not my family, but everyone.” 

Kanan just listened. He didn’t argue about unintended consequences or collateral damage—Ezra had seen that first hand. He just listened.

“I know—well, not the way you guys know, but I know war is horrible. But isn’t leaving everyone to the Empire more horrible? Doesn’t everyone deserve a chance to _try_ to break free?”

“Even if it ends up like Tarkintown?” Kanan finally asked. _Or Mygeeto. Or Lasan._

Ezra stumbled there. “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “All I know is... if you let the Empire just have their way, then everyone loses no matter what.”

Kanan sighed. Ezra was right. The Empire simply could not win this fight. _Sometimes the question_ is _the answer._

No matter his misgivings, did he really have a choice?

“We need to be in the war room in half an hour,” Sabine called over the comms. “Just relaying the message.”

Kanan gulped down more of his caf. No time for a meal, he decided. He was really too rank to be seen in polite company. 

“Kanan—”

“I hear you, Ezra,” he assured him. “And you’re right. The Empire is a foe that needs fighting, I’m just not sure _this_ is how we should be fighting them.”

“Like Sabine said, I’m not sure they’re giving us much of a choice.”

Kanan clapped a hand on Ezra’s shoulder and headed for the door. “Maybe not,” he agreed. 

Once in the ‘fresher, under water that washed away the sweat if not the worry, Kanan thought about what Ahsoka had said, about the urn in his soul. He knew it was poisoning him—knew it from the way he and Hera didn’t really talk when they talked, the way Ezra didn’t really connect with him when he was connecting. The way he hadn’t felt the Dark Lord coming soon enough to protect his padawan because he was too busy protecting himself.

 _Let the air in,_ Ahsoka had said. _Sage advice…._

But how to crack it?

*********

tbc


	2. Issues of Trust

He didn’t remember civilization being so _loud_. Though he guessed a warship wasn’t exactly civilization, was it? As Ahsoka, Zeb, and Erza gave him a tour of the _Alion,_ Rex worked on just dealing with the fact that he wasn’t wandering the sands of Seelos hunting joopa anymore. 

What had he been thinking, letting them pull him out of retirement? He’d seen what the Empire had built in the years since he’d faked his death. And here the rebels were, fighting with equipment only a little newer than his crawler back home!

“So every clone got a name?” Ezra was asking. 

The kid was a kick. So like Commander Tano there at the beginning, all questions and enthusiasm. 

“You had to earn your name, boy,” Rex told him. 

“How’d you earn yours?”

Because of course he was going to ask that one.

“He told me once that it was because it means ‘king’ in some human language,” Ahsoka said. 

_Leave it at that_ , his eyes told her. 

“Then another time, Fives told me it was because people on Coruscant like to name their pomnas Rex.”

The kid started laughing. 

“Thanks so much, Commander,” Rex muttered.

“What’s a pomna?” Zeb wanted to know.

Ezra stopped laughing long enough to explain. “It’s like a loth-pup,” he said. 

Ahsoka did _try_ to come to his defense, Rex noted, as Zeb started laughing as well. “Pomna are exceptionally loyal, brave, strong, and resourceful,” she pointed out.

“And housepets,” Zeb put in, smacking shoulders with Rex in a comradely manner.

Damn, this felt _good_. 

“So we’re not going to find out how you got your name?” Ezra asked after they’d all had a good laugh at him.

“Not after that, kid, no.” 

He tried to walk away with some dignity, but really, he was just enjoying being here. Around people again. In the thick of it. He hadn’t thought he was missing all this until he’d been thrust back in.

“Let’s go to the cafeteria and get something to drink, Old Man,” Zeb offered.

Ezra looked immediately disappointed. “I have to go meet Kanan on the _Ghost_ ,” he admitted. “Jedi practice.”

“I’ll see you later, kid,” Rex promised, watching the youngster run off. “Ah, to be young again,” he murmured.

“ _Were_ you ever that young?” Zeb asked. 

“For about three months, yeah,” Rex admitted. “We clones grew up fast—engineered that way. But we got a few tastes of what humans go through when they grow up.”

“They take too long to grow up,” Zeb quipped, leading them to the cafeteria. “At Ezra’s age, I was already a conscript in the Lasan army.”

“I don’t know,” Rex argued. “I think the kid’s already a fine soldier. Fast on his feet and faster in his head.”

“Don’t let Kanan hear you say that,” Zeb warned, walking to a table in the corner and taking up half of it. “Last thing he wants is for the kid to get a taste of army life.”

Ahsoka nodded sadly at Rex’s incredulous look. 

“So why in the suns are they _here_?” he asked. 

“Kanan seems to be asking that question a lot,” Zeb answered. 

They ordered their drinks from the droid before they continued talking. 

“He’s even younger than you,” Rex said to Ahsoka. “Reckon he’s never gonna be real fond of clones.” Which could go both ways. Kanan’s deep down hate was wearing on a man. Rex understood the guy’s reaction, but it didn’t sting any less.

“No,” she agreed. “Honestly, I was trusting the Force when I sent him to you.” And then she smiled. “It’s good to see he was able to look past his own prejudice and bring you back.”

“That’s Kanan,” Zeb offered. “He may not like you, he may not trust you, but he’d never just let a good man die.”

Rex shook his head. “Not sure that’s the basis of a never-ending friendship, but… I’ll take it for now.”

************

Ezra ran fast enough not to be late. Kanan had been in the same mood—bad—since Rex had first said hello on Seelos, and Ezra wasn’t going to bring that down on his own head.

The funny thing was that, right before they’d left, Kanan had started to be a little less of a nerf’s rear end. The Dark Lord had terrified them both, and maybe that was why Kanan was finally acting like less of a teenager than Ezra himself. They needed to get better to be ready for the fight that had to be coming.

Ezra slipped in the airlock of the _Ghost_ and opened his senses to find Kanan, not surprised to feel that the wall in Kanan’s mind was still there, worse right now because of Seelos. He sighed and headed for the cargo hold, where he could feel Kanan meditating. Seemed like these days, it was one step forward and two steps back for them, but at least he sensed Kanan’s mind in front of the wall felt at peace, for the moment.

Ezra folded down to sit on the decking next to his master, closing his eyes and centering himself as he waited for Kanan to be ready. After all the drama of their first couple of months of training, Ezra had come to find that this part of their schedule was actually one of his favorites. Even if they weren’t necessarily in sync all the time, they were together, and focused. A calm in the middle of any storm.

He opened his own eyes the same moment Kanan did and watched his master smile easily. Fantastic. A good mood for once.

“Think we can train without cutting up Hera’s cargo bay?” Kanan asked with a laugh in his voice.

“We can try,” Ezra said, climbing to his feet and taking out his saber. “But all bets are off if Chopper comes in.”

Kanan shook his head. “Oh, no,” he vowed. “You hurt Hera’s droid, _you’re_ taking the fall for it.” He stepped back into the center of the space and ignited his blade. “Close quarters combat is different than the kind of fighting you’ve done before….” he began.

And the lesson proceeded.

Ezra wanted to think they were both exhausted by the time they bowed to each other a couple of hours later. Kanan wasn’t sweating buckets like he was, but he was, maybe, a little winded. Ezra had no idea why Kanan had the kind of stamina he did, and it annoyed him.

 _It also saved his life when they tortured him_ , his mind reminded him.

And there went his good mood.

“You did really well today, Ezra,” Kanan told him, restoring a little of his post-lesson high. “Remember that movement flows through the force—the saber will help you. Trust in your connection to it to evade when you have to.”

Ezra shook his head. “Like jumping from the deck to the catwalk, like you did?” he asked. He _still_ couldn’t do that.

“You could do that easily,” Kanan told him. “You _have_. Sometimes you just overthink it. Let the Force flow through you and the movement will come naturally.”

They walked as one toward the ladder. Ezra was _starving_. “If it comes naturally, why do I have to spend all those hours practicing my forms?” he asked as they topped the ladder and headed for the common room.

“Because nature must be molded,” Kanan told him as the common room door opened before them. 

“He’s right, kid. Muscle memory is the soldier’s best friend.”

Ezra sighed internally at Rex’s announcement. Not that he didn’t want to see the old clone, but putting him and Kanan in the same place was _sure_ to ruin whatever good mood Kanan had regained.

True to form, Kanan closed off—physically, mentally, even his voice became clipped and tight. “We’ll work more on reaction time tomorrow, Ezra,” he promised. And then he was gone.

Rex had the good grace to look chagrined. “Didn’t mean to clear the room,” he murmured. Zeb was sitting next to him at the dejarik table, the figures glowing at what looked like the midpoint of a game.

Ezra smiled his own embarrassment and walked on into the galley. Sabine was heating up a stew.

“Dinner’s nearly ready,” she told him brightly. Glad to be home, he figured.

He had been, too. Five minutes ago. “You can probably count Kanan out for that,” he told her, annoyed. “Especially if Rex is staying.”

Sabine closed her eyes for a second. “He is _really_ trying my patience,” she growled softly. 

“After what happened to his master, he’s just trying to deal with having a clone around that we can trust,” Ezra tried to excuse him. “He’ll come around.”

Sabine snorted. “Seems like, lately, every time you think he’s come around, something else comes along and we’re right back where we started.”

Ezra didn’t disagree. The weirdest part of the puzzle was that, when they were training, it was like none of the rest of this mattered. None of it even registered for Kanan. Which was great and all, and Ezra was learning more than he ever had before, but he had to wonder _why_. Why, if Kanan could let it go, why he wasn’t.

And how long they were all going to put up with it before the whole thing blew up in their faces.

*********

Kanan knew better than to try to meditate right now. He was sweaty and tired and, up until ten minutes ago, he’d actually been feeling pretty good about things. 

_“Trust him,”_ Ahsoka had said. Right.

Every single thing about Rex rubbed him the wrong way. The way he moved, all swagger and spite. The way he spoke—like he knew things Kanan didn’t. Just like Grey. _“You can learn and listen now, kid, or you can end up back in the bacta tank.”_

Kanan growled and grabbed his kit and headed for the refresher. 

The bruises the Dark Lord had left behind on his shoulder were faded to a mottled yellow in the mirror, but after the workout he and Ezra had had this afternoon, the joint was sore and aching. He’d been lucky to get away from the Sith with only that. 

_“With so much darkness without, you might want to consider draining the wound.”_

“How am I supposed to do that when you send me to find one of _those_?” he asked Ahsoka in absentia. He stepped under the water—only good thing about being moored to the corvette was that their water stim tanks were bigger than the _Ghost_ ’s. Longer shower. _More time to hide._

His master’s voice rang in his mind, the words a lesson on the question of whether he would have risked his life for a clone. For Stance. _“Many would not, young one. He is a clone. Nothing more.”_

Kanan took a deep breath and tried to let the water wash away more than just the grime. He knew he wasn’t being fair. Rex wasn’t Grey. He wasn’t Stiles. 

_“It’s okay,” Stance had consoled him, back when his friend was just his birth number, 1157. “Big-Mouth has me on a leash so short, I can count his nostril hairs.”_

But Rex sure as hell wasn’t Stance.

And the fact remained that Kanan had trusted the clones before. And then, between one breath and the next, they went from valued friends to murdering enemies.

He couldn’t make the switch back that quickly. He didn’t think he should have to.

So he hid in the shower a while longer, until he knew he was in danger of making Hera angry at the use of resources. Dried and dressed, he headed back to his quarters and closed the door against the sounds of community in the common room. He didn’t want community right now.

Because he knew, as he lay down and pretended to be tired, that in his nightmares, community would flash to tragedy in seconds.

After all, it had been doing it for fifteen years.

*************

tbc...


	3. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during and after episode 5: “Always Two There Are”.

Hera sighed hugely and closed the bulkhead between the bridge and the hall. More metal between her and the endless bickering in back. 

“We’re taking Spectre-6 with us, Spectre-2,” Sabine called over the comms. 

“Good idea,” Hera replied. “It’s possible I’ll’ve thrown the other two out an airlock before you get back.”

“Also a good idea,” Sabine replied. “Headed out. Expect us back in six.”

With a wink of transition, the _Phantom_ disappeared into hyperspace.

Leaving Hera alone with Rex and Kanan. She could only hope that Rex would tire of the fight and head back to the _Alion_ soon. Meanwhile, _she_ had work to do.

Five reports and a full hyperdrive diagnostic later, the door to the main ship opened and Kanan stomped through. Didn’t even have the grace to have a couple of cups of caf in his hands.

“I don’t even know why we let him on this ship in the first place.”

Hera didn’t say a word. She’d heard Ezra sound more adult. A lot more.

“He purposely picked that fight. He can’t keep his mouth shut.”

Hera could.

“And I can’t _believe_ Ezra just left like that,” he grumped.

Okay, maybe she couldn’t. “Maybe if you and Rex weren’t both acting like the wrong end of a rycrit, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Me?” Kanan asked incredulously.

Hera turned in her seat. “Kanan, I get it. I do. After what happened to the Jedi in the Clone Wars, having Rex around is difficult—”

Kanan shook his head in anger. “It’s not—”

“No,” she agreed. “It’s not. It’s not just what happened at the end, is it?” He didn’t answer, which was the answer. 

She let the silence do her work. 

Kanan finally hung his head. “He makes me feel like I’m fourteen years old,” he admitted.

“You sound it.”

Kanan glared at her for a second before grinning in embarrassment. The grin dropped immediately. “It isn’t fair,” he said finally, and at least now it was the lament of an adult and not the whine of a petulant child. “I fought alongside the clones for months, Hera. They were friends, some of them—even the ones that treated me like a little kid.” He sighed. “And now all that means nothing because of what happened in the end.”

Hera understood. Over the years, he’d told her bits and pieces. She’d pieced together more. “The Emperor planned it that way,” she said quietly. “Get them as close to the Jedi as brothers, so that your guard would be down.”

Kanan stared out the front viewscreen. “Rex said to me, ‘We all have a choice.’ And that’s the problem. What if they _did_?”

“Ahsoka told me he removed his own chip. He saved her life when the order came down.” Hera leaned forward and put a hand on Kanan’s arm, feeling the tension there. “You don’t have to like him,” she assured him. “But for everyone’s sake, can the two of you keep from starting a fight every time you’re in the same room?” She sighed. “If nothing else, you’re tearing Ezra apart.”

Kanan looked up at her and she fought the urge to hit the arm she was touching. Did he really not see it?

“He wants to please both of you, Kanan,” she explained. “You’re his master, and he’ll always seek your approval, but Rex has things he can teach Ezra, too. Ways to defend himself when he has to hide being a Jedi. Things an old soldier knows that we just don’t. Rex could help us, if you would stop—”

“—acting like the wrong end of a rycrit?” Kanan finished for her, a more relaxed smile on his face. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before looking up at her again. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” she said sharply. “We have a few hours before the kids get back.”

“And you probably have to work,” Kanan griped. 

Hera fought the urge to sigh again. Yes, she was busy too much of the time lately. Maybe that was part of their problem, too. 

“I have time for lunch?” she offered.

“Just lunch?” 

Hera rose and dropped a kiss on the top of his head. “Sadly, yes. Just lunch.” 

Kanan rose and captured her hand as they walked back toward the galley. 

“These days, I’ll take what I can get.”

********

The shaking didn’t start until they were in hyperspace. Once he started, though, Ezra couldn’t stop. 

_“There are many hunting you now. All intent on killing you and your master.”_

Many. There were _many._

And one of them had already almost killed Sabine. If he closed his eyes, he saw the huge male—and what species _was_ he, anyway?—his hand gripping her entire head, his saber at her neck.

“Ezra.”

And the feeling of… her… in his mind. Crawling through like those creepy probes of hers. The pain as she slammed against the wall he’d thrown up in his head.

“Ezra!”

He looked up to find Sabine crouching before him, her hands on his knees, watching him. Sabine, alive. Safe. Worried.

“I’m fine,” he muttered.

“Well, I’m not,” she replied, her eyes haunted. 

No, she wasn’t. And that was his fault. “They never would have even been there if I hadn’t come along.”

Sabine snorted. “Do we know that?” she asked reasonably. “We don’t even know how they found us there. Maybe she had those creepy things of hers all over the galaxy, waiting to find us.”

“To find me,” he corrected. _There are many hunting you now…_

“They’d’ve used any of us as bait,” Zeb called from the pilot’s chair. _Lasat hearing_ , Ezra’s mind commented unnecessarily. “They obviously know who we are. If you weren’t there, they’d’ve used us regardless.”

“Lucky for us, we had you,” Ezra called forward. 

Zeb brushed it off again. “Coming up on our rendezvous.”

Ezra took a deep breath and stood up. “Let’s find out why we didn’t know to be watching for them.”

*********

Hera’s hands on him in the common area had been the only thing staving off a panic attack. One they absolutely did not have time for.

So Kanan kept it together through the entire briefing. Through Ezra’s stilted, to him glaringly incomplete, description of what happened with the inquisitors; through Sabine’s theory that they had been staking out the entire sector, waiting for them; through Sato’s disquieted acceptance of the information and complete lack of plan as to how to deal with it.

Because how did you deal with this? How did you deal with a Sith Lord and _multiple_ Jedi hunters coming after people who could lead them back to the whole fleet?

And they knew that Ahsoka was alive—seemed to be actively looking for her.

How, by the Force, did they deal with this?

“Ezra,” he called, as the meeting broke up, drawing his apprentice to him. Ezra was tight and his mind frightened. If Kanan needed out of here, how much more did Ezra?

Kanan waited until they were back in the _Ghost_ and led Ezra to his room. 

“I’m sorry,” Kanan murmured as he closed the door. “I didn’t know.”

“I know,” Ezra said quietly. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have jumped on you like that. I know you wouldn’t keep something like that from me.”

The implication that he might keep other things from him hung in the Force between them, but this wasn’t the time and Kanan didn’t have the energy. Panic was crawling in his veins, and he hated the feeling. Hadn’t he just dealt with that? Hadn’t he finally risen above the pain and the memories of the Inquisitor they’d already faced?

“I’m sorry for something else, too,” Ezra said, a shuddering breath running through him. “What the Inquisitor must have done to you at Mustafar.” His eyes were dark and haunted and the glaringly incomplete wasn’t anymore. 

“Ezra…” He gripped the boy’s shoulder. There was nothing to say, so he didn’t try.

“It was like she was trying to tear down my skull,” Ezra whispered. “I know you and I practiced with shielding, but…”

“It’s different when the other guy is willing to drill his way in.”

“Yeah.”

When Ezra finally spoke again, his voice was tortured. “They almost killed Sabine,” he blurted. “She said there were _many_ coming after us. _Many_.” He ran a hand through his hair. “What if… What if someone gets caught in the middle again? What if it’s not ‘almost’ next time.” He looked up at his master, imploring. “Kanan, what are we going to do?”

The latest unanswerable question. 

“I don’t know, Ezra,” he admitted painfully. “But I do know that we’ll face it together.”

It wasn’t enough. And Ezra shouldn’t have had to deal with less than enough. But that was what they were left with.

“Can you do me a favor?” Ezra whispered, as he headed to the door.

“Anything.”

Ezra looked back. “No more secrets,” he said simply. “Just… no more walls, okay?” His fist clenched. “Trying to protect me hasn’t helped us yet.”

Kanan’s chest tightened painfully. “No,” he murmured. “No, it’s hasn’t.”

Ezra nodded, and left without a word.

Kanan fell into a seated position on his bunk, trying to hold it together a little while longer as panic threatened to overtake him. Why he tried to outlast it, he didn’t even know anymore, but…

 _Control is both an art and an illusion._ It was an old Jedi saying. Another one he never understood. Control was how you used the Force in the first place, right? Control was what every Jedi spent every day working toward. Control your feelings. Control your movements. Control the Force.

“But I can’t control anything.” 

_An art and an illusion._

Suddenly, it made sense. Suddenly, tears rolling down his face, Kanan felt the urn break.

**********

Ezra sat, knees to his chest, in the farthest corner of his bunk and felt Kanan fall apart. Felt the panic and the bitterness and the fear pouring out into the Force around them. There was so much of it.

The tears on his own face were a release he’d never really learned not to need, and for once in his life, he didn’t wonder if he’d be better off without the ability to cry. Better off a little more jaded. Suns knew he’d tried when he was on the streets. Flint-hard loth-rat, right? That should have been him, but…

But how much would have been caught behind his own wall if he’d lived like that?

There was nothing they could do to fight this but get stronger, and they could never get stronger by lying. By hiding from the past _or_ the future, they’d only destroy themselves in the present, right?

Themselves and everyone else.

So he cried. For the fear that _she_ had made him feel, for the memory of what could have happened, for the pain that Kanan had held inside so long it threatened to drown him, and for the knowledge that he couldn’t help Kanan purge it. He cried because it was the one thing he could do right now.

Because sometimes, you had to stop pretending you had any control over anything.

***********

Hera waited until Ezra left Kanan’s room. And then she waited a little bit longer. 

Kanan had been close to losing it in the common area, but, true to form, he’d pulled himself together and gotten the job done. That included helping Ezra. And while their boy didn’t look okay when he left Kanan’s room, he looked like he’d manage. He was better at moving on than any of the rest of them, she always thought.

Ten minutes later, she stood at Kanan’s door, debating whether to enter or not. The door swished open of its own accord and settled the debate for her. She stepped in quickly before Kanan changed his mind, and let the darkness envelop her as the door closed behind her.

He sat on his bunk, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. Crying. Not the panicked tears he’d shown her when she’d been injured, but silent weeping.

“Kanan, love?” she asked into the darkness. 

He didn’t answer, so she sat next to him, enfolded him in an embrace that supported his weight as much as he chose for it to. Simply there. Because she’d be nowhere else.

It was minutes, maybe—many of them—before he sniffed once, as neat and tidy in a breakdown as he was in everything else, and gently moved them both until they lay on his bed, her head on his chest. She listened to his heart slow to a steady, reassuring beat.

“Are you okay?” 

He shook his head. “No.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead. 

Hera had a sudden fear that he’d slip into the silence again. “Talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to say,” he told her, and somehow the words held an openness that put her mind at ease. “What happened to us, we can’t change. What will happen, we can’t know.”

“But we’ll face it together,” she promised. A motto that had lasted them to hell and back before.

And somehow, for now, that was enough.

*********

tbc….


	4. Run and Hide

“I’ve been looking for you for some time.” She was almost impossibly thin and angular, her voice oily, metallic.

Ezra swallowed hard. “Bounty hunter?”

“Guess again,” she murmured, amused as she ignited her lightsaber.

And then he was running, Sabine at his side—straight into another of them. Huge and black and terrifying. “Not the one we’re looking for,” he quipped, his mouth trying to stave off the panic with sarcasm.

They took another hallway, to find another inquisitor. And another, and another. No matter where they turned, there were more of them until he and Sabine were surrounded by slick and evil faces, greedy eyes, and the burning red of their lightsabers.

The huge beast grabbed Sabine and his lightsaber lit her neck, inches from it and moving closer.

“Now,” _she_ purred, slinking up to him, her hand reaching out, thoughts crawling into his brain and digging spurs into his mind. “Let’s try again—”

Ezra bolted upright so hard his head smacked into the ceiling.

“Oh good,” he murmured unsteadily. “Another nightmare.”

He rubbed his head, glad he hadn’t broken the skin, though he felt a lump where he’d made contact with the metal tiles above him. Knowing sleep wouldn’t happen again tonight, he slid down the beds past Zeb’s sleeping bulk and creeped out into the hallway, listening carefully with the Force _and_ his ears—taking Rex’s advice. For once, everyone was asleep, even Kanan.

Oh Suns, he needed sleep. Tomorrow would be more blaster drills and lightsaber practice and whatever else he was supposed to be doing. He needed a solid night of rest once in a while just to keep up, but the inquisitors that haunted him pretty much assured that wasn’t happening any time soon.

He padded silently through the common room and into the galley. Caf was becoming as much an addiction for him as it was for Hera. Hera… what was _she_ going to come up with for him to do tomorrow?

“Maybe I’d be better off just disappearing,” he thought aloud. He’d be harder for the inquisitors to find if he was by himself, right? And it would be harder for them to use the team against him if they weren’t around.

It wasn’t really an answer, he knew, just a fantasy that made the long night a few seconds shorter. The answer was to just keep doing what he was doing. If he could fight and shoot _and_ use a saber, maybe he had a shot the next time one of them found him.

Maybe.

With a sigh, he headed for the top turret, then out the access hatch and onto the roof. He laid there, looking up at the sky, until morning. Then he hauled himself up and started all over again.

It was time for blaster practice, after all….

*************

“I can’t believe there wasn’t more out there,” Sabine complained later that same day. “It’s not like Garel’s a backwater.”

She and Rex met up with Hera and Kanan in the bazaar after trying for hours—mostly unsuccessfully—to hunt down _anything_ that might help the people on Rinn. Zeb was still out looking, but so far, between them they had a total of two generators to show for their day’s work.

“The Empire’s squeezing everyone everywhere,” Rex replied, pushing the crate. “Maybe someone else had bett… What?”

Kanan had come to a stop ahead of them. Unexpectedly. So of course, Sabine just naturally went on guard. They were a block from home...

He pulled his comm off his belt and put it to his lips. “Ezra?” 

Silence. Sabine shared a look with Hera, who shook her head. _Not good._

Kanan took a second—Sabine always read it as him looking ahead of them to make sure nothing bad was around the corner—then headed on toward their docking slip, calling Ezra over the comm again. And again there was silence, and _now_ , Sabine was getting worried.

“Do you sense… _them_?” she asked, praying the answer was no. She’d faced a lot of things in her time, but the inquisitors were just terrifying in a whole new way.

Kanan shook his head. “But Ezra’s not there.”

“The kid was off when we left,” Rex suggested. “Maybe he took a walk?”

Sabine actually almost believed that. Ezra hadn’t had a free moment in a couple of weeks now because there was always something one of the three of them needed him to do, or wanted him to learn. Even _she_ ’d had some free time at his age.

Unfortunately, she didn’t think that was the answer. “He wouldn’t have gone off on his own now,” she argued. “He’d be alone if the inquisitors caught up to him.”

“Sometimes I worry that’s exactly what he wants,” Kanan grumbled, sending a shock through Sabine. Until, of course, she remembered Ezra taking the blame for everything that happened on that medical platform. If anything had happened to her, he’d’ve thought it was his fault.

But Ezra wasn’t that stupid. Was he?

“Chopper, come in,” Hera called into her own comm, as they walked into the enclosed space that held the _Ghost_. When _he_ didn’t answer, Sabine started to wonder if Rex was right. After all, the _Ghost_ stood there, safe as ever. And Chopper was pretty good at keeping an eye on Ezra, though the obnoxious astromech would never admit to doing it.

“ _Phantom_ ’s gone,” Rex announced, having moved ahead of the rest of them to check out the ship.

Hera’s lekku stiffened and curled as she looked up at the empty space where the little shuttle lived. “Where did he take my ship?” she asked sharply. “He’s not even allowed to _fly_ my ship.”

She jogged for the _Ghost_ ’s gangplank and headed up to the cockpit, the rest of them following. If Ezra really had just taken off, he was in _so_ much trouble!

Kanan followed, opening himself wider to the Force. He was once again annoyed at himself for closing his mind off for so long, now he’d cleared away his own obstructions. The distance he could achieve, he used to his advantage. Ezra… faintly—not planetside but near… Where _was_ he? At the moment, his apprentice was more irritated and conflicted than anything...

Hera was opening long-range comms, so he sat down in the co-pilot’s seat and started accessing the ship’s logs.

“Chopper, where are you?” she growled over the line. Kanan didn't translate the testy binary response, too busy reading the log. “Busy!? _Where_ are you busy?”

“Seriously?” Kanan broke in before the droid could answer. “Vizago’s ship?”

“What?” Sabine cried, sitting behind Hera while Rex took the spot behind Kanan. 

“Seven hours ago—right after we left—our ship received a distress signal from the Broken Horn.”

And that was where Ezra and Chopper were, according to Chopper. Chopper, who was busy and really didn’t have time, but he’d get back to them later.

“Droid’s been taking lessons from Ezra,” Hera grumbled.

Sabine’s voice was speculative. “Ezra did make that deal with Vizago,” she said. “Maybe he figured now was the time to pay him back?”

Kanan looked back at her. “When did he make a deal with Vizago?”

And then everyone but Rex (who just looked curious) looked uncomfortable, which pretty much answered the question. 

Kanan crossed his arms in irritation. “When I was—”

“Missing,” Hera finished for him. “Chopper, at least confirm that Ezra is okay.”

Ezra was busy, too. Later.

“He said Ezra’s busy,” Sabine translated for Rex. “Well at least that means he’s okay.”

“It does?” Rex asked.

“If he wasn’t, Chop would be cursing him out,” Kanan explained.

“Sounds to me like your boy just needed to get out and stretch his legs,” Rex chuckled. 

“In _my_ ship,” Hera grated.

“Can you blame him?” Sabine asked, backtracking immediately when Hera glared at her. “I mean, of course, he shouldn’t have just taken the _Phantom_ , but… You guys have been riding him pretty hard.”

Kanan nodded reluctantly. “That’s probably where the not wanting to be a Jedi came from,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry?” Hera snapped.

“No kid’ll do what they’re told all the time,” Rex pointed out, unwittingly saving Kanan from a tongue-lashing. Kanan almost forgot to dislike him for a second. And then the old clone gave a reminiscent smile. “Not even a Jedi.”

Yeah, it was only a second.

“There was no room in the Jedi Order for that kind of disrespect and disobedience,” Kanan argued.

“So I’m betting you never knew where the leeward tunnels were, then?” Rex asked.

The wry smile wasn’t something Kanan could keep off his face. Not if he tried.

“What were the leeward tunnels?” Sabine’s interest was complete, now.

Kanan looked at Rex—he’d started this after all—but the soldier kept his mouth shut. 

Ezra was okay, by the feel of him, and Chopper was watching his back. For the moment, things were okay and maybe, only _maybe_ , Rex had a point as to what Ezra had done and why. 

“Deep in the temple were a series of tunnels that led out into Coruscant,” he began. “They were _supposed_ to be for emergencies only, but every once in a while, a few Padawans—”

“—and initiates,” Rex cut in significantly, as if calling Kanan out in a lie. _Oh stars, was Rex stationed on Coruscant when I was that young?_ The thought flashed through his mind and was gone.

“And initiates,” he continued, “would sneak out. For a little while. To see the planet, you know? See how other people lived.”

“Are you telling me _you_ snuck out past curfew?” Sabine asked. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“No,” Kanan disagreed. “I never snuck out past curfew.” He grinned. “I snuck out in the daytime when the shops were open.”

“I always knew you were a delinquent,” Hera announced.

“I’m sure you did.” But he smiled at her in a way that made her lekku relax and twist just that little bit. Made it worth it.

“I remember General Kenobi telling me there was a leeloo shop about ten streets out from the temple?” Rex led.

Oh, _that_ brought back memories. “Jokkok’s,” Kanan said. “He used to let younglings pay for their candy by moving it. If you could use the Force to lift it out of the jar and into your hand, it was yours.” The memory was so clear he could smell the long sweet leeloo sticks. “I assume the Order paid him for them, but it was a great way to practice.” 

There were other places, less silently sanctioned by the Order, where you could practice other things, but he’d gone to war too young to take advantage of them. He’d made up for it out there in the galaxy, but he remembered being wowed by the stories of Padawans putting theory into practice.

“The point is,” Rex said, reclaiming everyone’s attention. “Every kid’s gotta let off steam once in a while.”

The comms beeped. Chopper announced that the _Phantom_ was fine except for the scratches, it would be docking in an hour, and he and Ezra were still busy.

“ _Scratches?!_ ” 

Kanan shared a grin with the rest of them. Hera was definitely going to make sure Ezra learned a lesson from this.

************

Rex was actually feeling okay about things when the _Phantom_ docked just shy of an hour later. Kanan was, for once, not arguing, and seemed to be taking the kid’s rebellion in stride. Hera maybe less so. Regardless, they were all waiting in the common area—Ezra deserved a full audience for his folly.

“You’d better just come down and get it over with,” Sabine called once the _Phantom_ ’s hatch sealed with the _Ghost_.

And then Kanan froze, his face darkening, and drew his blaster. 

“Whoa, Kanan—” Sabine started.

Kanan climbed up the ladder and they heard the hatch to the _Phantom_ open. “Where is he?” Kanan asked, sounding enough like death that Rex nearly drew his own sidearm.

“Ezra? My very dear friend, Ezra Bridger?” came a voice Rex vaguely recognized. “He, uh...”

“Get down there now.” Kanan could be scary, apparently. 

“Yes, of course!” 

The voice obviously wasn't familiar to Sabine and Hera, given how they stiffened. Sabine actually did draw her blasters, holding them on the character who descended the ladder, followed by Kanan. The newly minted prisoner was a Weequay, more ropy than solid. He looked both alarmed and crafty and carried a metal box that looked to be full of credits. 

Hondo Onaka, Rex's mind supplied. The old pirate king had obviously not benefited from the Empire's rule. He looked worn down, but still as weasely as ever. Oh, _this_ was going to be interesting.

“He’s the only one aboard,” Kanan announced. “Sabine, go up and check out the crates he’s carrying.”

She scrambled up the ladder, calling down to them a minute later.

“He’s right—no sign of Ezra or Chopper,” Sabine called, as Kanan _led_ (okay, shoved) Onaka further into the common area. “The hold is full of generator crates.”

“Yes!” the Weequay exclaimed, as if they’d given him an opening. “Yes, the generators! Oh, this is such a story, my friends!”

“We’re _not_ your friends,” Kanan growled menacingly. 

“Yes, no, because of course we have not even been introduced!” The slick conman smoothed his clothing. “I am Hondo Onaka!” Like everyone should know him or something. He had the guts to look at Kanan politely. “And you are…?”

“Losing patience,” Rex barked. He smiled wolfishly when Onaka jumped. The pirate narrowed his eyes, trying to place Rex's face, no doubt. But all old clones looked alike, didn't they?

“Yes, of course!” Onaka groveled, looking for a lie to tell, Rex’d wager.

“Let’s start with where my crewman is,” Hera asked. They were all facing Onaka like a firing squad (which they could be if needed—they _were_ all armed). 

“Ezra? Oh, Ezra is fine—a warrior, that boy!” He must have seen Hera’s fuse getting shorter. “He is coming, I promise. There was not enough room with all the generators, you understand, and he wanted to make sure they got here safely.” He bowed a little. “So he entrusted them to my care.”

Hera shook her head and pulled out her comm. “Chopper where are you?”

Weird she hadn’t once called Ezra’s comm. Rex had to wonder just how angry she was at the kid. It _had_ been a stupid move, given those inquisitors running around out there, but while Ezra wasn’t your typical teenager, he had to have typical teenage urges once in a while.

The astromech let loose a string of bleeps and bloops that sounded foul and Hera relaxed, so Rex figured that meant Chopper and the kid were okay.

“They’re on their way,” Hera announced. 

“Let’s take our new friend and meet them in the cargo bay,” Kanan suggested. “He can tell us all about it.”

Rex was guessing it’d be quite a story. And none of it true.

**********

Hera breathed. Because she wouldn’t lose her temper here. Ezra had had his reasons for leaving—almost every one of them a good one. But it didn’t change the fact that it was an incredibly reckless choice to make.

Again. She could only hope that whatever _really_ happened with Vizago, Ezra’s debt was paid and they wouldn’t have to deal with the Devaronian again. 

The door to the cockpit opened behind her and she turned to see Ezra standing forlorn and tentative. “Kanan said it was your turn,” he said meekly.

Kanan was right.

“Ezra, what were you thinking?” she asked, going on before he could speak. “You didn’t even tell anyone you _left_. Where you were going. If something had happened, we’d never have known where to look.”

“I know,” he replied quietly, walking forward and leaving the door open as he dropped into the chair behind the copilot’s, like he knew he hadn’t earned _that_ seat tonight. “I just…” He sighed. “I guess it was nice to dream that maybe, I _could_ run away, you know?” He snorted bitter laughter. “Be a pirate.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Chopper was right. I was just running away from my problems.”

“You were,” she agreed. “Ezra, I know it seems like everyone wants something from you.”

“You do,” he replied sharply. “You need me to help with the _Ghost_ , Rex needs me to be a soldier. Kanan needs me to be a Jedi.” He blew out his breath and sagged. Every inch of him. 

“What we _need_ is for you to be safe,” she told him.

“I can’t be that,” he whispered. “Not with _them_ out there.”

“The inquisitors,” she said quietly.

“I dream about them every night, Hera,” he confessed.

_Goddess, how did he sleep at all?_

“There’s thousands of them. Coming for me. Killing you guys to get to me.”

“We’re not going to let that happen,” she assured him. 

“What if you can’t stop it?”

The question hung between them in silence. 

“We will,” Kanan vowed from the doorway. “But we can’t do that if you take off like that again.” He strode forward, took his place across from Hera. “You told me you had us,” he said. “That means you keep us. You don’t go off on your own—not even to protect us, because that won’t work.” He looked at Ezra carefully. “That favor you asked me works both ways.”

What favor it was, Hera didn’t know, but it made an impression, and Ezra nodded, relaxing a bit.

“Let’s ease up on training—for now,” Kanan offered, nodding behind him. Hera looked back and saw Rex in the doorway in agreement. “There’s a lot you need to learn, but one of the most important things, you already have.”

“What?” Ezra asked sadly.

Hera knew exactly what he was saying, but maybe Ezra was too tired to see it. 

“How to care for others,” she answered. Ezra looked up at her, confused. “You did everything you could to deliver those generators,” she pointed out. “Generators that are desperately needed.” Ezra’s face brightened just a little bit. “You saved lives today, Ezra.”

“Yeah.” 

She hated to rain on his sunshine. “But you also scratched my shuttle and dented my docking port.”

Ezra drooped, caught. “I’m sorry, Hera,” he began, but she cut him off.

“Be sorry tomorrow,” she told him. “For now, I want you to _sleep_.” She looked significantly at Kanan, who nodded and stood as Ezra did. He’d talk to their boy—make sure Ezra got some real rest tonight.

“Thanks, Hera,” Ezra murmured as he headed aft and she turned back to her console.

“You’re going to need all your energy to pound the dents out of my ship,” she called back.

She grinned a little as she heard him groan.

“Now, that was just plain mean,” Rex told her, sounding surprisingly approving. 

“There are many ways to show you care,” she replied.

************

Kanan had spent time with Ezra, discussing his dreams, trying to draw them out and hopefully, help Ezra sleep for once. He knew all about the exhaustion of not sleeping through your nightmares, and at least his knowledge could be put to good use.

That said, he didn’t plan to be asleep himself if Ezra awoke in the middle of the night. That had clearly been happening too frequently in the last two weeks.

So for now, he meditated, focusing on nothing. Nothing was coming to him easier, day by day. Ahsoka had been right (he had the feeling she was right a lot these days) when she said that releasing his own darkness could only help them. He’d spent so much time hiding it and hiding _from_ it, but it had been surprisingly easy to let it go. And now that the urn was broken, he saw more clearly.

He _was_ more clear.

Sabine and Zeb were delivering the generators to a frigate that would drop them on Rinn. It felt like that was something they hadn’t done in a while. Just pure helping people. It felt _right_. Or maybe it was simply being on the ground, the _Ghost_ by herself, connected, but separate, not tethered to the war by an airlock and tubes.

Or maybe it was just that he trusted again. He trusted Hera to get them where they needed to go, in every sense of the word. He’d never be a commander in this army—Master Billaba had been right about that—but he could be _her_ support. He could _help_.

Once upon a time the Jedi had been counselors. They’d guided kings and senators and, yes, even generals, in the ways of _not_ fighting. Maybe that was his path here. Maybe his problem was that he _could_ be making better choices, even if the choices he made weren’t the ones the rebellion made around him.

“Kanan,” Hera called over the comms, a shade of confusion in her voice. “There’s an incoming transmission from Janner Moxx.”

“On Ibaar?” He stood and headed for the bridge. 

They’d met Janner years ago, during a mining dispute that had gotten ugly. They’d delivered medical supplies and food for the people there when the mining guild blockaded the planet. Eventually the dispute had been resolved peacefully, with the guild agreeing to enough concessions to allow the people to survive.

“Please,” Janner was saying as Kanan walked in. The Ibaarian looked tired and scared on the holo. “We won’t last much longer with the Empire squeezing everything out of us.”

Hera looked up as Kanan slid into his chair. 

Janner continued. “It isn’t like before,” he said. “Whatever they need our meleenium for, they need vast quantities now. Far more than we can mine.” He sighed. “They’ll starve us out if we don’t deliver, but we can’t. There’s just not enough of us to make their quotas.” He hung his head. “And there’ll be fewer of us if they continue the path they’re on.”

Kanan leaned forward, feeling the purpose clearly in him. _This_ was what they did. What the rebellion should be about.

“It’s okay, Janner,” he promised. “We’ll help.”

************

tbc….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a break here of a few days, I think. After rewatching season three with the kids, I'm realizing I need to rethink the rest of season two. So... might even be the new year? But this movement will be completed as soon as I can.


	5. Flying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during and after "Wings of the Master."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's sex here. If you don't wanna read it, just stop after Kallus's second passage, mkay?

Kallus read through the brief communique once more. It had been sent by one of their spies on an out-of-the-way mining planet, out past Lothal. Apparently, the people there were beginning to whisper about the demands the Empire was putting on them. Whispers led to words, words led to planning, and planning led to disruption.

Ibaar. On the face of it, it wasn’t the kind of world where you’d expect to find the seeds of rebellion. But the seemingly docile population had risen up once before. He reviewed the files with interest.

Eight years ago, the Mining Guild had ramped up production to what the populace deemed was an unreasonable level. Rather than simply work harder to meet the quota (though Alexsandr admitted to himself that it had been a bit more than a small population like the Ibaarians could shoulder), they took part, en masse, in a work stoppage. 

The Mining Guild, of course, blockaded the planet and ceased delivery of foodstuffs and medical supplies—necessary on a planet that had been stripped of its organic resources decades ago. That should have been the end of it, but for a small number of interested parties who managed to burst through the blockade and deliver enough supplies for the Ibaarians to wait out the Mining Guild. Almost unheard of, and yet, it happened. The Empire took over control of the Ibaar mines after the dispute, and now the planet’s resources were being used exclusively for the Emperor’s top-level projects. 

But Alexsandr knew well that Imperial control did not mean the embers of sedition weren’t percolating somewhere on that planet, waiting to be provoked. _Provoked and used to the Empire’s advantage,_ he thought.

He smiled at one of the holoshots from that blockade years ago. A _very_ familiar Corellian VCX flashed its tail at the blockading cruiser taking the picture.

The _Ghost_.

He had no question whatsoever as to who the Ibaarians might call out to, should they face a similar situation. Quotas had recently been raised, and history _could_ repeat itself, if prodded along. He reached forward and flicked on the comms on his desk. “Put me through to ISB Command,” he ordered. _I have to see about a blockade…_

**********

_“We lost the transport.”_

_“Get moving,_ Ghost _, we’ll cover you.”_

_“We lost Phoenix Leader!”_

_“Go Captain, get out of here!”_

_“They’re cutting us to pieces!”_

_“We lost Phoenix Leader…”_

“Hera?”

Sabine’s voice shook Hera from the fugue of cries in her mind. 

“Yeah,” she murmured. This was her fault. “How did they know we were coming?”

“They probably figured someone would come eventually.” Kanan was suddenly in the seat behind her, and she looked away from the swirling blue out the viewscreen to find his soft eyes watching her. There was pain in those eyes, for her and for them all. Her fault...

“No,” she said quietly. “Kallus was here for us, you know he was.”

“We helped Moxx once before,” Kanan pointed out. “I’m sure that’s in the Mining Guild and Imperial databases somewhere.”

Hera nodded. She supposed it didn’t really matter now. Seven crew members lost on the freighter… and Lattan. “Phoenix Leader…”

Kanan’s hand was warm on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Hera,” he murmured. 

She could feel Sabine’s eyes on her from the copilot seat, Ezra looking up from the forward guns below. Zeb was a support from the doorway, but he’d already lost friends to this rebellion, hadn’t he? Everyone was sorry. 

“We _need_ to help those people,” she grated, turning forward again and determined to ride out the hyperspace jump without another word. They owed it to Lattan and that crew and the entire Ibaarian people.

_And to ourselves._

***********

Kanan stayed close. Hera wasn’t one to break down easily—or ever, really—but this had been her baby from the first. The two of them had made a plan with Janner Moxx on Ibaar, they’d acquired the supplies, planned the run.

Losing Lattan Kar hadn’t done her any good, either. She’d pushed to have the lieutenant promoted to Phoenix Leader when they lost Jak. Again, her plan, her fault, right?

She strode angrily through the _Liberator_ and he could feel her obsession rising—he didn’t need the Force to do it. Obsession led to reckless actions, even in a woman as pragmatic and analyzing as Hera Syndulla. That never boded well for a mission.

He was surprised to find himself clear-headed, though. Janner’s plight pulled at him and Force knew he’d lost enough friends to war to feel the sting of Lattan’s death. But running off half-cocked wouldn’t help them here. Kallus was ruthless and he had five Imperial ships with access to enough TIEs to hold back the rebel fleet itself, much less a small team like the one they’d tried to get in there.

They needed to come at this a different way. Hera and Kallus were prepared to put everything they had against each other until neither had anything left….

And then, suns help him, it was _Rex_ who came up with the answer. A blockade buster on an impossible planet, with—hopefully—the power to blast through the Imperials without sacrificing everything.

“Hera will go,” he volunteered her shamelessly.

It wasn’t surprising to be cornered by her as the meeting broke up.

“Kanan, we have to make another run at that blockade,” she pushed.

He nodded, feeling peculiarly serene. This was the right choice and he knew it. _Even if the choices I’m making aren’t the ones the rebellion is making around me._

“We do,” he agreed. “With the right ship at the right time.”

And then he kept his own counsel from there on in. In another time and place, he’d’ve hoped Hera would be proud of his ability to handle the itchy silence, but right now, she bristled under its blanket.

“ _Kanan seems to think_ we need to go to Shantipole to see about getting a blockade buster,” she grated at the rest of the crew when the two of them returned to the _Ghost_ to brief them.

“Sounds like just what we need,” Sabine replied, and Kanan smiled inwardly at the way her enthusiasm grated on Hera’s nerves. Not because he wanted Hera hurting any more than she already was, but because it distracted her from that pain, if only for a second.

“So I’ve heard,” Hera growled. “Zeb, Sabine, get ready to go. Kanan and Ezra are going to drop us off in the _Ghost_ ,” she broke off the thirty-sun glare she’d had fixed on Kanan and turned to head toward her cabin. “I’m going to go read up on Shantipole.”

There was a beat of silence after her cabin door closed down the hall.

“Wow,” Sabine said.

“You’ll be paying for this one for a while, Kanan,” Zeb agreed.

Kanan figured they were right. But he also knew—just _knew_ —that things were going to work out here. If he didn’t get himself and Ezra killed before she got back.

Funnily, he didn’t worry at all about Hera crashing on the mysterious disaster that was Shantipole. She simply wouldn’t fail to land safely, test the craft, and get back to them. His worry was that she’d come too late, but he supposed they’d have to deal with that somehow, wouldn’t they?

*********

Hera had heard Sabine and Zeb talking behind her in the hangar. Denigrating the blade wing.

But suns, it was a gorgeous craft. She could see the reason for every design choice, understand the need for both the stellar and terrestrial flight accommodations…

Kanan had been right, damn him. This was where she needed to be.

Now if she could just get that blasted Mon Calamari to let her _fly it._

*********

“The senator will be back to you as soon as we can secure a location for possible construction of these new blockade busters.” Organa’s aide’s hologram flashed out of existence and the room lights raised slightly.

“We still have not had a status report from Captain Syndulla?” Sato asked. The briefing around him was tense with the information. Janner had checked in, and the conditions on Ibaar certainly weren’t getting any better.

“Hails have gone unanswered, but given the atmosphere on Shantipole...” Rex explained.

Kanan accepted it. Accepted it because he couldn’t change it. And he’d’ve known if something had happened to her. She was where she needed to be. He trusted that.

Mostly.

“We will wait,” Sato said, addressing the entire briefing. “For as long as we can, in the hopes that Captain Syndulla will be able to return in time with this blockade buster. If she does not…”

“If she doesn’t, the _Ghost_ will make the run, Commander,” Kanan announced.

Sato looked at him speculatively. “You know what you are up against?”

Kanan held in his sarcasm and his tone was even. “Intimately, sir,” he admitted. “But the Ibaarian people have no other hope right now. We need to try.”

“We do,” Sato agreed. “We will have a status meeting in ten hours to reassess,” he told everyone. 

As the meeting broke up, Kanan stepped over to Sato, waiting patiently for the Commander to complete his discussion with one of the analysts. 

“Was there something else you needed, Kanan?” Sato had learned the lesson early on: Kanan had no rank and wanted no rank. He was simply Kanan. 

Kanan nodded. “Phoenix Leader,” he said quietly. “We’ll need to find a replacement for him.”

Sato’s eyebrows rose and it took a second for Kanan to realize he’d said _we’d_ need to find a replacement. 

“Indeed. Captain Syndulla has been very impressed with Lieutenant Hashih.”

Kanan nodded, knowing he was giving a completely unsolicited opinion and not caring in the least. If he was really getting involved here, now was the time. “She’s a good pilot, but I was thinking of someone with more experience.”

Sato looked at him appraisingly for a long moment. “We were under the impression that Captain Syndulla would be… uninterested in such a role.”

“Really?” Kanan was kind of surprised. Hera practically screamed “promote me!” He wondered, if he’d had a chance to talk to Ahsoka all those months ago, if Hera would have been promoted already.

“The captain has made it clear that her own crew is of utmost import to her.”

Kanan shook his head. “So is the rebellion, sir.”

“And I don’t think she’d put up much of a fight if you gave them all a chance to play a more central role.” Rex put in. 

Kanan stopped himself from shaking his head at the clone’s interference.

Especially because Sato seemed to welcome it. He brooded for a long moment. “I will certainly take your thoughts under advisement,” he assured Kanan before walking off.

Rex had to get his two credits in. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that,” he murmured. He sounded almost approving.

“Yeah, don’t read too much into it,” Kanan told him, and beat a hasty retreat before the old soldier could start suggesting that they all start calling him Commander Jarrus.

**********

Hera came out of hyperspace into a replay of her latest nightmare. 

“Watch your six, Phoenix Three.”

“Coming around four-five!”

“Better pick up the pace.” Kanan, stressed. “Those cruisers are closing the gap.”

And they were. The _Phantom_ drew closer, and Hera could see the whole mess laid out. Even more ships on the rebel’s side than there had been. And just as long odds.

Kanan had been right. They needed another way.

“I’m gonna swing around and try from another direction,” Kanan called out, frustrated. And of course he was carrying the cargo. Carrying it into the same hopeless gauntlet they’d run before.

But this time, the path directly ahead of him could be cleared in seconds.

“Stay on course, _Ghost_ ,” she told him confidently. “I’ll knock that cruiser out of your way.”

Because he trusted her, Kanan did exactly as she asked.

And because she was born to do it, Hera did what she did best.

She flew.

*********

“Sir, all rebel ships have fled the area.”

Alexsandr stared at the remains of his cruiser. 

One ship. One, small, ship. He had looked at the rebel contingent as they blasted out of hyperspace, that _Ghost_ of theirs in the front, and he had _tasted_ victory.

And one small ship had drained it from him.

One pathetic Jedi Padawan, left over from a failed war.

One surviving Lasat from a planet blasted clean.

One young boy from the streets of a backwater Outer Rim world…

What was it about these rebels, as opposed to all those he’d quashed in the past, that refused to lay down and be beaten!?

**********

Hera was almost tired of being saluted by the time the debrief was over and they were safe in the _Ghost_ again. 

Almost.

Honestly, Kanan could salute her all he wanted. Forever.

He sat next to her now, lounging in the common room with a satisfied air about him. Involved. 

_“That is why I agree with Kanan’s recommendation.”_

“I can’t believe _you_ suggested this,” she murmured to him, watching Zeb think over his next dejarik move. Kanan was going to have the Lasat shortly. Five attacks, tops.

“I just suggested they needed someone experienced at the top,” he said, though the satisfaction in his voice said it all. He snuck a tiny kiss to her nearer lek before taking out another of Zeb’s playing pieces, and Hera was still high enough from the flight of the blade-wing to get a very pleasant little shock from the movement.

She completely ignored Sabine’s smirk. A natural born meddler, that one.

Kanan absently brushed against her side as he leaned forward to make a move in the game, and she realized another game was definitely on. 

He leaned back to let Zeb make his move and Hera moved her hand under the table, brushing his upper thigh. Accidentally.

He coughed, the out-breath funneling neatly to swirl against her neck.

“I’m tired,” Sabine announced. Loudly. “Time for bed.”

“We’re not done with the—” Zeb looked at the board as Kanan launched a killing attack. “Karabast.” And then he looked up at the two of them and Hera saw the light go on.

“Yeah, I’m ready for bed myself,” he agreed quickly, rising. “Come on, kid,” he called, cuffing Ezra lightly on the shoulder. “Time to let _Captain Hera_ get some sleep.”

Ezra didn’t get it, of course. He was a couple of years away from that, Hera hoped. Though God help them all when he got there!

“I thought we could—”

“Training, first thing in the morning,” Kanan ordered, keeping his voice remarkably steady as Hera’s hand moved farther up his thigh. He ran a hand down her back, hidden from the boy’s view, and she fought the shiver. “You’ll need your rest.”

Ezra grumbled, but Sabine grabbed his shoulder and got him out of the room.

“Kids, huh?” Kanan murmured, though his voice had quite suddenly gone very husky.

“I don’t want to talk about the kids right now,” Hera told him, raising her free hand to cup the back of his neck and draw him down toward her. “I really don’t want to _think_ about the kids right now.”

Kanan kissed her with all the enthusiasm she could hope for and she realized it had been a _very_ long time since they’d done more than this. Far, far too long.

“Then maybe we shouldn’t be making out in the common room?” he suggested. 

They made it to her quarters in short order.

After years of Sabine right next door, they knew how to be silent, and Hera arched soundlessly as Kanan touched as much of her skin as he could while he stripped her. She returned the favor, taking her time. She’d had a lot of speed today, and now, with him, she wanted to take it slowly.

“You were amazing,” he whispered, nudging them both toward her bunk as they made out like teenagers. “It was like that ship was built for you.”

She knew what he meant and the fact that he could understand the translation from flight to Twi’lek just turned her on even more. As if he knew she still wanted to fly today, Kanan stretched out on her bunk, inviting and naked and seductively hairy. Humans were just hairy.

That was _good_.

Hera straddled his hips, putting pressure on both of their pleasure centers, that hair sliding against her deliciously. Her lekku twisted in a dance they hadn’t danced in a long time and Kanan obligingly reached up to run his hands down them both with delicate, maddening pressure. He pulled them slowly forward, over her shoulders, until he could cup the sensitive tips and her sensitive breasts at the same time.

“We shouldn’t wait so long to do this again,” Kanan murmured, a little breathless, which made Hera smile wickedly until he squeezed his hands and took _her_ breath away, too. Her mind refused to even acknowledge why they’d been so long apart. Instead she slowly bent over him, running her hands from his nethers to his neck, and kissed the kriff out of him.

By the time they both came up for air minutes later, Kanan was shaking and ready and she was thoroughly soaked in just the right place. It was a second of exquisite waiting before she rose up on her knees enough to get him inside her. 

The sensation of being with Kanan was something she could never explain. She wasn’t Force-sensitive and never would be, and as far as she knew, a Jedi couldn’t cause someone else to feel them, but… He surrounded her as she surrounded him. The power of him—of _them_ —so rich and so electrifying…

Every bit like flying, only better.

His beautiful eyes never left her face, nor hers his, and his hands still held her breasts, squeezing and caressing, then running up her lekku to drive her mad and them both closer to the edge as she rode him. She increased her rhythm and his hips rose up to meet her, in perfect sync for the first time in a long time.

Everything, in sync.

When they came it was together and it was, almost literally, stunning. She blinked away the grey light between her and his gorgeous eyes as she fell forward toward him, catching herself on her arms mere inches from his face.

Sated and spent, he still had the strength to crane his neck up and kiss her gently. Lovingly.

“I love you, Captain Hera,” he murmured as he drew her down to his chest.

Hera snuggled in and let his descent into sleep draw her down as well, Feeling as if their lives were, finally, _finally,_ starting to take a turn for the better.

********

tbc...


	6. Big Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during and after "Blood Sisters."

Ezra sprinted back to the _Ghost_ , keeping to the roofs of Garel’s massive port, though he hadn’t even been pursued. Nearly half an hour after he’d fallen from the shuttle, he jumped down into their slip and found Hera waiting for him at the ramp of the cargo area.

“She’s okay, Ezra,” Hera told him immediately. “She and Chopper are headed to Havok to drop off the droid.”

“They are?” Ezra took a breath, suddenly realizing he hadn’t had a proper one in a while. It was a long way across half the spaceport!

Hera grinned at his concern. “They are,” she assured him. “Take a minute and calm down.”

He breathed, calming quickly. “Hey, did you know that Sabine used to be a bounty hunter?”

Hera’s face grew puzzled. “Yes,” she replied. “Did she actually talk to you about that?”

Ezra shook his head as they both headed into the ship and up the ladder toward the main deck. “We ran into an old friend of hers. Ketsu Onyo?” He shook his head. “Man, that really—”

“Ketsu was _there_?” Hera interrupted sharply.

Ezra nodded. “Yeah, um… She was after the courier—who’s a droid, by the way. I swear they almost shot each other, but then Sabine got the shuttle off the ground, and I… sort of fell out...”

Hera turned on her heel and dashed for the cockpit, opening a comm. “Sabine, this is Hera, come in.”

Sabine was busy, Chopper told her, answering instead. And this was an awful lot of trouble for a little data. Did she have any idea what he’d had to do already on this mission?

“No, I don’t, Chopper, because Sabine isn’t answering her comm,” Hera told the bratty tin can. 

Ezra was worried all over again. 

Sabine was taking care of things and Chopper was sure she’d call them later. And one of his pneumatics had burst when he was blown out of the shuttle. She’d better fix it when he got back.

“Blown out of the shuttle?” she cried.

Were her hearing cones defective? Yes, blown out of the shuttle. He was fine, Sabine was fine, and he was going now, because he had things to do. She’d sent him as backup, hadn’t she? He was backing up.

Hera shook her head as the astromech rang off, but she was calming down. “Just once, could _one of you_ not get in trouble when I turn my back?”

“But…” Ezra was confused now, too. Shouldn’t they be doing something? “Do you think she’s okay?”

“Chopper said she is, and Sabine can take care of herself.” She sighed. “Even _if_ Ketsu is in the mix.”

“But Sabine said something about Ketsu leaving her to die.” Ezra was actually getting a little bothered. Why wasn’t Hera more worried?

Of course, she _was_ some worried. You could hear it in her voice. But she was trying not to worry him, clearly. “If Sabine needed help, she would let us know.”

He thought about that for a long moment. They’d taken on a lot of stuff as a team. And he and Kanan had taken on a lot of stuff, too, by themselves. He wanted to think that was just the way it worked—each of them doing their job and being trusted to do it right, but...

“So, you weren’t worried about me when I went to help Vizago?” Because she’d’ve trusted him to let her know if he needed them, right? Regardless of the dressing down she gave him. One that a mom would give her kid when he did something wrong.

Hera’s lekku went a little stiff and curled.

“I mean, you knew I could handle it. Right?”

“Ezra, Sabine’s been in some really bad situations in her life—even before she joined us. I trust her to take care of herself.” It was really subtle, but the emphasis on _her_ was plainly there.

“But not me.” He remembered her comming Chopper and not him when they were walking back to the _Ghost_ after taking Vizago’s escape pod. How many times had she talked to Chopper during all that, he wondered.

Hera turned to him. “It’s not that at all,” she tried to explain. “Ezra, you’re young—”

“Apparently, Sabine was a bounty hunter when she was my age,” he offered logically. “And the way I grew up on Lothal wasn’t exactly safe, you know?” He looked out at the docking slip in the growing evening and the discontent he’d been feeling the last few weeks reared its ugly head again. “It just seems like you all expect me to ‘man up’ and then treat me like a kid. It’s not fair.”

 _Which is exactly what a kid would say, Ezra,_ he thought to himself. _Good job._

But Hera listened, which he appreciated. “You’re right. It’s not fair. But it _is_ the reality of being the youngest.”

Ezra was stopped cold by that for a second. 

Hera grinned gently at his silence. “The youngest in every family is coddled, Ezra,” she explained. “It kind of goes with the territory.”

Completely uncharted territory for him. “Sabine was the youngest before me,” he pointed out, as if that should mean something.

Hera’s grin grew. “Sabine threatened to shoot Kanan the first time he tried to get between her and a fight,” she told him. “But he still kept doing it.”

At least Kanan didn’t do that to him. Much. 

Weird. Kind of made Sabine his big sister, didn’t it? Which… felt pretty nice, actually. 

“Are you sure she’s okay?” he asked. 

“No,” Hera admitted. Felt nice that she’d let him see how worried she actually was, too. “Want to get us a caf and wait with me?”

Ezra grinned and headed for the galley.

**********

“Think that’s the last we’ve seen of her?” Ezra asked, as Ketsu took off. 

Sabine couldn’t shake the conviction that Ketsu had turned a corner. A corner she herself had turned years ago when she ran into a Jedi in hiding and a Twi’lek with a penchant for picking up strays. “No,” she said quietly. “And I’m glad.”

“Well, I’m just glad you’re back,” Ezra proclaimed.

Sabine grinned at him as they walked toward the _Ghost_ ’s docking slip. “Don’t tell me you were worried about me?”

“No,” he argued, lying through his teeth. “I knew you could take care of yourself.” They walked in silence for a few minutes. “Okay,” he admitted. “I might’ve been a little worried.” He looked over at her, concern in his eyes. “You did say she’d left you for dead.”

_A dark, cold night, a shot-up leg, and the Imps going house to house in search of her..._

“That was a long time ago,” she told him as they walked into the open area where the _Ghost_ sat. “I guess everyone changes.”

“I never did understand how Jedi could have such lousy aim,” Rex drawled from the corner where they’d set up the firing range. 

Kanan had his blaster in his hand and a predictably sour look on his face. “Look, old man,” he growled. “I’d like to see you make that shot.”

Rex stepped forward. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said confidently.

Sabine rolled her eyes and Ezra let out a frustrated sigh next to her.

“It’d be nice if _they_ changed,” he groused, speeding up and trying to get to the _Ghost_ before the two men noticed him.

“Ezra!” Kanan called, as Rex missed his shot.

Sabine wished the two of them would just stop.

“Hera needed him for something,” she told Kanan, walking up the ramp and away from the scene now playing out, as Kanan had to rub Rex’s failure in his face.

“Thanks,” Ezra murmured as she topped the ladder to the main level. He looked sheepish and sweet. “It’s nice to… have a big sister looking out for me.”

Sabine smiled at that. Yeah, having a big sister was a great thing. She’d had that with Ketsu. Maybe she’d have it again.

But she’d always _be_ a big sister. Whether it was keeping Tristan out of trouble or helping Ezra avoid the children outside, masquerading as grown men.

“Anytime, little brother,” she promised.

Anytime.

********

tbc...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, that one's short. They can't all be crazy long, though, can they?


	7. A Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during and after "Stealth Strike."

“Ezra Bridger.” Alexsandr stared at his holoprojector for a moment after Admiral Titus’s image disappeared. The man had made a lucky catch—Bridger was away from his little band, from the sounds of it. If he himself could lay hold of the child, perhaps they had a chance at obtaining some useful information.

“Set course for the Del Zennis system,” he ordered. He’d have to make it there fast, before Bridger got away. Titus was unlikely to listen to him and guard the boy properly. He’d learn by experience, as the rest of them had.

Sato would give them little. Alexsandr knew him by reputation, and he was made of durasteel by the sounds of him. And even if he did give them what they sought, Ezra Bridger could give them something else. The Jedi. 

Kanan Jarrus had astounded him with his resilience. Even after the Grand Inquisitor explained a Jedi’s trained resistance to the powers of interrogation droids, Alexsandr had been impressed. There was nothing in a Jedi’s training that made them immune to electrical torture, surely. One didn’t simply survive that sort of ordeal easily. And miraculously unbroken.

That was the key. 

Alexsandr had seen the opposite many times, after all. Even if a prisoner was able to prevent themselves from speaking, the torture itself left them broken in a way that guaranteed they could have no future involvement in whatever activities they’d previously taken part. And yet Kanan Jarrus, after days that should have killed a human, bested the Inquisitor himself. Pure adrenaline couldn’t account for something like that.

Then, not two months after the destruction of Moff Tarkin’s ship, the _Ghost_ had been seen taking part in a raid on an Imperial fuel depot. While he hadn’t been certain Kanan Jarrus himself had been involved in that or other subsequent raids, the radio chatter from last month’s blockade run at Ibaar had finally been partially descrambled, and Jarrus could clearly be heard in the crosstalk.

Jedi were truly remarkable. It was no wonder Lord Vader sought them out so zealously. To capture and _keep_ young Mr. Bridger would go far toward Alexsandr’s own advancement. To do something Vader’s inquisitors could not. 

But to keep him, he had to get to Del Zennis. Quickly.

**********

To be fair, the reactor core _was_ kind of like Jedi practice. Well, until Chopper cut off the gravity. Ezra shook his run-over hand again as he and Chopper headed toward the rebel ship. At least he didn’t have to hear Rex and Kanan bickering back and forth the whole time. That they were doing it at all right now was kind of ridiculous—they were in the middle of a mission!

He was going to have a talk with Hera, because if there was anyone who needed to grow up in this crew, it was those two.

He heard them before he saw them, of course. Bringing chaos wherever they went, that was the Phoenix! Ezra slid into the mix, blocking blaster shots as Sato and his crew tried to move forward. Kanan was at his back.

“Get Sato and his crew to the blockade runner!” Kanan demanded suddenly.

 _What!?_ “Where are you going?”

Kanan growled in frustration. “I gotta get my friend.” And he ran back toward the stormtroopers.

Took Ezra that long to notice that Rex wasn’t with them. Kriff. He took a deep breath, turned back to Sato and his men, and did what he was supposed to do. What Kanan trusted him to do.

He got the job done.

**********

Kanan had felt clones in the Force before. As a kid, he’d found it interesting that each one felt different, but maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. They were living, changing, evolving beings. They weren’t just unthinking, preprogrammed soldiers. He’d forgotten that along the way.

In battle, his mind just cataloged and hooked into his fellow combatants on instinct, and that certainly hadn’t changed in fifteen years. So the rip through the Force as something shattered Rex’s calm was all too evident and could not be ignored.

He wasn’t letting another friend down.

Obedient little stormtrooper that he was, slipping into the war room was easy. Holding back the flood of unpleasant memories at the sight of the skrogging interrogator droid was a little harder.

Rex looked like he’s been roughed up on top of the being run ragged they’d all had a lot of today, and Kanan recognized all too easily the green-around-the-gills of the droid’s pain injection. Didn’t stop the shine of anger and determination in Rex’s eyes, though.

“I’m going to terminate you,” the Admiral in charge taunted him. “Not like a soldier, or an honored veteran.” He started the probe toward Rex, and just the sound of it had Kanan freezing for a moment. “Oh, no. You will be discarded and forgotten. Like an obsolete piece of field equipment.”

 _“They are clones. Nothing more.”_ Kanan snapped back to himself and his eyes narrowed in anger.

“And no one will know or care.”

Could he _have_ a better opening?

************

Rex knew he was headed for the floor in pretty short order. But damned if a clone was going down from exhaustion in the middle of a fight. 

He pushed off from Kanan as they fought their way out, giving the Jedi room to move. He wouldn’t slow him down. The initial agony of the pain injection was already wearing off, but he’d run too much today. By the time he fell into the escape pod after Kanan, it was all he could do to suck in air.

“You okay back there, old timer?” Kanan called, distracted by the getaway. 

Rex snorted and sucked it up. Did his job. 

“Just make sure you’re heading for the right ship,” he shot back lamely. Damn, why hadn’t he been working at getting back into fighting condition these last few months!?

And then they were on board and safe and the entire flotilla was so much Imperial space junk. Luckily Kanan was still a jerk—wouldn’t want too much to go right in a day. _Force_ , but Rex needed to find his bed.

“Hey, Rex?” Kanan called.

Feeling roughly a thousand years old, Rex turned back… to get a salute he’d honestly never thought to get.

He held his own return salute for all of ten seconds before his eyes rolled back in his head.

*********

“He needs hydration and rest,” the medical droid pronounced, ten minutes after Kanan had hollered for help and he and Ezra had dragged Rex to the blockade buster’s minimal combat triage bay. 

Kanan hadn’t exactly been panicked, but he was more worried than Ezra figured he should be, given that this was Rex they were talking about. Ezra, on the other hand, was pretty worried. Rex was flushed, with a gray around his lips and eyes that Ezra didn’t like the look of. And he had just been out. Limp and hard to carry and Ezra really wanted him not to have sacrificed himself to save _him_.

“Imperial pain drugs are dissipating,” the droid continued.

“Clone metabolism,” Rex muttered, coming around.

“Doesn’t make it hurt any less, though, does it?” Kanan commented lightly, a smile for something shared between them.

Rex smirked in understanding. “I forgot you guys could do that with pain drugs, too,” he replied. _Do what?_ “General Kenobi was a master—could drink even a clone under the table.”

General Kenobi was a man Ezra knew only in stories, and those stories didn’t really involve drinking games. 

Kanan chuckled in response, so maybe he hadn’t been telling Ezra _all_ his stories. “He was a good teacher, too.”

“Still hurts like hell,” Rex agreed.

“This unit is too old to—”

“He’s not a _unit_ ,” Kanan growled, surprising all of them.

“Apologies,” the med droid replied. “This clone is nearing thirty standard years of age.” _THIRTY?_ The droid faced Rex. “Is there a reason you have not been retired?”

“Tried that once,” Rex said with a grin, closing his eyes against the exhaustion he was clearly still feeling. “Figured hunting joopa wasn’t as much fun as running around after these guys.”

But Ezra was still stuck on something. “You’re only thirty years old?”

Kanan’s smile at Ezra’s incredulity lasted for as long as it took for Rex to open his mouth. 

“We clones weren’t made to last, kid.”

Grey’s words. Grey’s voice. Grey’s inflections, even. Stiles’s thirteenth birthday, though. The anniversary of the day he came out of the tanks. It was the first time it had really been drilled home to Caleb Dume that these men who’d seen combat for months, sometimes years before he had were, most of them, younger than him.

And they were all dead now, killed by him or Depa or time itself. Killed by Palpatine and his horrific scheme to turn the Republic’s army into an abattoir. 

“With prudent self-care, this… clone… could live for many years more,” the droid supplied, shaking Kanan out of his memories. “Its current weight and lack of stamina, however—”

“Yeah, I think we get the gist of it, thanks,” Rex cut it off. 

Kanan looked at him and, for once in their acquaintance, he didn’t see a traitor or an enemy. He didn’t see the past.

Just a friend.

Which was a start.

**********

tbc...


	8. A Midnight Walk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "The Future of the Force."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God, so much fluff. Brush your teeth after, okay? I won't be responsible for any cavities.

Hera looked up from her endless search for a new base as the _Phantom_ docked above her. About time. Kanan had called in hours ago. Takobo wasn’t that far away, but the day had gone into night and the silence had been too heavy.

She’d known two babies were coming, but the sound of their babbling startled her anyway. Zeb came down the ladder one-handed, an Ithorian child sleeping on his shoulder. It was beyond precious.

An Ithorian woman followed him. She moved as if injured, but also as if she was terrified to let the child out of her sight for even a second. Zeb dutifully handed it over to her as soon as she was standing on the deck plates, managing the transfer without waking the kiddo. Ezra came down into the common area next, a bemused grin on his face as he looked over at the babe. He was followed by Ahsoka, and then… 

Kanan came down cradling a human child. Things were done to Hera’s heart that really had no right to be done. Chopper was very clear on the fact that if Kanan dropped the child that wasn’t going to be _his_ fault, but Hera ignored him completely.

 _Kanan_ was carrying a _baby_.

“Don’t worry, we’re not keeping it,” Ezra joked, completely oblivious to the feelings raging behind Hera’s eyes. 

“The girl’s parents are making their way to Garel now,” Ahsoka told her. She had a smile that said she knew exactly why Hera’s gaze was unlikely to leave Kanan until after the baby did. “Alora’s grandmother is on the Nyaga An, being treated for her injuries.”

Hera nodded. She had no idea what Ahsoka had just said. In her weaker moments, Hera had actually allowed herself to picture Kanan with a child (a child with human-hued skin and lekku and _maybe_ hair and turquoise eyes). He'd be gentle and heroic and competent. This was _nothing_ like that. 

Kanan had nervous eyes on the little girl who stared up at him, as if she’d break if he looked away. The baby was tightly swaddled—humans always seemed to think that wrapping a child as tightly as possible was somehow going to keep her calm—and Kanan was bouncing her quickly in his arms. He looked painfully awkward. Hera tried not to laugh. She did, but…

“Kanan she’s a child, not a cocktail shaker.”

He finally took his eyes from the bundle and locked them with Hera’s, his discomfort melting into a glowing smile at whatever he saw there. _Oh Goddess..._

“She’s uncomfortable,” he explained, embarrassed.

Hera knew exactly why. Humans had, on average, a horrible sense of smell. Ithorians, too. But Hera did wonder how Zeb and Ahsoka had managed to get through the ride home with that stink. Force, were all human babies that smelly?

“Sabine should be—”

“—back with supplies,” Sabine finished for her, waltzing in the door. She had a large basket over her shoulder, and she wrinkled her nose immediately. Apparently not _all_ humans had bad noses. “Ugh. None too soon.” She walked up to Kanan and stroked a hand down the fussy baby’s face. 

“It’s not like we had anything to change her,” Kanan defended himself. And, from the look on his face, it wasn’t like he’d ever changed a child’s diaper, either.

“I’ll do the first one, but then I’m teaching you for the next,” Sabine joked.

Kanan, for all his discomfort, seemed not to want to let the little girl go, but Sabine didn’t really ask, and he was suddenly standing there empty handed, watching the child be bustled over to the galley.

“Hey, you’re not going to take care of that on the table, are you!?” Zeb cried out, disgusted.

“ _You_ want to change it?” Sabine called back. Her next comment was half-muffled as the door closed between her and them. “Gack, why do people bundle their kids up like this?”

“I need to check in with Commander Sato,” Ahsoka announced. “I’ll escort Oora and Pipey on my way.” She looked back at the galley. “I’d suggest Kanan or Sabine take Alora. A Togruta carrying a human child might attract some attention.”

Hera nodded. This time, she processed what was said. “We can take Alora to the Nyaga An,” she offered. 

Ezra shook his head. “Isn’t _any_ baby going to attract attention this late at night?” he asked.

Hera shook her head. “Some parents will do anything to get their kids to sleep,” she told him. And then she looked up at Kanan, smiling gently. “Want to go take the baby for a walk?”

Kanan blushed—which also did things to her insides—and nodded. “Sure, I think we can do that.”

Sabine emerged from the galley, little Alora on her hip in a much less restrictive little sleep sack. The girl looked happier and smelled _much_ better. 

“Wow, Sabine,” Ezra said quietly, even a little awed. “I didn’t think the mother look would work on you—”

“Please, I was changing my brother’s diapers when I was two,” she told him. She looked up at Kanan, who, despite being only ten years older than her, did kind of come off as her dad and always had. “We could probably pull this off,” she thought aloud. “Okay, where are we taking this cutey?”

Hera smiled. “Kanan and I will take care of this,” she promised. The reality was never going to happen for them, so if Kanan was going to be a pretend dad for even five seconds, _Hera_ was going to be the one beside him. 

Sabine grinned big—the meddler!—and handed little Alora to Hera. “She’s all yours.”

The baby girl looked at her for a second, then turned her eyes back to Kanan. Hera looked up and saw that the Ithorian child was awake again, looking to Ezra in the same way. Awkward but kind of wonderful, Hera decided. And these little children could be protected now, instead of leading the kind of hunted life Ezra had had to lead in the last year and a half.

“Okay, let’s get this little girl on the road before it gets too late,” she said, quietly, because Alora was starting to fall asleep.

*********

Garel was a planet warmed by the sheer number of people and machines that populated it, so the walk, even in the deep of night, was warm and comfortable.

Hera seemed to be having a little trouble negotiating carrying little Alora, which was surprising. Of all the people in the world that could be holding a baby, Kanan would have bet on Hera doing it with the most skill.

“Her head is really light,” Hera explained without him asking, a little bit of that awed-by-baby in her voice that had been in her eyes on the _Ghost._ Did things to Kanan’s insides. “Twi’lek babies have very heavy heads. It’s an adjustment.”

 _What would a hybrid baby have?_ his brain understandably asked him. _Lekku, no lekku…_ one _lekku?_

“Here, I’ll take her,” he murmured, shaking his head at the ridiculous thought.

Hera grinned up at him. “Are you sure?” she teased. “You looked like you were terrified of her in the _Ghost_.”

Kanan had the grace to look embarrassed again, but he settled the sleeping babe against his unarmored shoulder and shrugged with the other one. “Never had much experience with younglings,” he admitted, remembering how one particular babe would scream pretty much whenever he walked into the creche. “Sammo was great with the younger kids in the temple, but I never had much luck with them.”

“Really?” she asked, surprised by the admission. “You… seem like you’d be a natural.”

She said it in just the way they’d always silently agreed not to say it. When they first got together, Hera had made it clear that sharing his bed was fun, and a nice perk of him being her crew, but there was nothing long term here. 

But it became very much long term in a very short amount of time, and they both knew that he wasn’t leaving at the next port or the next port or the one after that. Hera never _said_ she loved him, but increasingly, that was just a matter of formality and protecting herself. He said it for both of them. He understood. 

The same way he understood that trying to conceive a Twi’lek-human child was something that took work anyway. Work they weren’t emotionally equipped to deal with. It was dangerous, too. Hera was safer if they continued to try _not_ to have a child. Even if, deep down, they both, maybe, wanted one. Maybe.

And then, when they were constant, deep, permanent fixtures in each other’s lives, when he could find her through the Force in any marketplace in the galaxy, when they _might_ have tried to talk about it, it was that their life on the _Ghost_ didn’t really lend itself to settling down in any permanent way. Then, well, we’re a crew of three now, we’re making headway, making a difference, changing this particular status quo wouldn’t really work for us. Then don’t we already _have_ a kid, and then don’t we have _two_?

“Maybe,” he answered.

The night kept him thinking too much—Hera, too, obviously, as she said nothing more, just watched him holding the little human—and Kanan was glad when they got to the Nyaga An. Ahsoka had gone before them with Oora and her son, and the Togruta was there to meet them, along with an older human woman in a hoverchair, who took one look at Alora sleeping on Kanan’s shoulder and burst into tears.

“Here you go, ma’am,” he said softly, settling the little girl in her grandmother’s arms and feeling the chill through his sweater where the child had drooled on him on the walk over. “Safe and sound.”

“I don’t know how we can ever thank you,” the woman replied, weepy. “We couldn’t stand to lose our little one.”

Kanan thought of the kids he considered his own and understood the sentiment completely. He simply nodded and they took their leave.

They were halfway back to the _Ghost_ before Hera took his hand in hers. 

“Sometimes I wish…” she whispered.

“Sometimes I do, too.”

************

tbc...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. That was mean.


	9. Conviction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "Legacy."

“Five large rebel craft were destroyed in the raid on Garel,” Alexsandr reported, as aware of the inquisitors at his back as he was of the Sith Lord on the hologram before him. The darkness in the room was rather stifling. “Along with a number of fighters. We believe it made a sizable dent in their overall forces.”

“You have done well, Agent Kallus,” Vader replied, much to Alexsandr’s relief. And surprise, honestly. “And what of the Jedi?”

And there went the other shoe. “The _Ghost_ escaped, My Lord,” he told him. “We can only assume that Bridger and Jarrus escaped with them.”

“Indeed,” Vader mused. “You will continue to pursue the rebel fleet.”

“Yes, sir,” he promised. 

Vader looked beyond him. “Seventh Sister?”

The Mirialan inquisitor stepped forward and Alexsandr gladly left the center of the holo transmission. Her companion stood behind her, brooding.

“Where is Ahsoka Tano?” Vader asked bluntly.

“We have not yet determined whether she was with the rebels—”

“She was,” Vader averred, cutting off her excuse. “And she is alive. I have felt her.” He raised his hand to point a finger at her. “ _You_ must find the other Jedi. Use them to draw her out. Ahsoka Tano must be found, and this rebellion crushed.”

“Of course, Lord Vader,” Seventh Sister assured him.

Vader cut the transmission and Alexsandr felt as if a fresh breeze had suddenly wafted into the room. He could breathe again. He left the war room behind him and stepped out onto the bridge, away from the inquisitors. They would need to coordinate their activities, but for the moment, he needed to be away from them.

He also had an idea of where the _Ghost_ and her crew might be headed. If not in the immediate future, at least very soon.

“Contact Lieutenant Lyste on Lothal,” he ordered as he strode toward the data center in the corner. “Tell him to be on alert for the rebels. It is possible they will return home.” Especially given the report he’d received during the Garel operation. 

He pulled up the details of the recent prison break and sifted through until he’d found the files he was looking for. Mira and Ephraim Bridger, killed while attempting to escape. Not as skilled at evading the Empire as their son, sadly for them, but their friend Ryder Azadi had succeeded where they failed. The former governor would head back to Lothal, no doubt, to try to resurrect the dissension he’d helped foment years ago. 

If he was there, if he contacted Bridger, Alexsandr wanted to know. For now, however, he would obey orders. He would find the rebel fleet.

_“You respect them,” Seventh Sister had said. “Even though they represent your constant failure?”_

He did. Alexsandr respected a worthy adversary. Most rebellions were born of anger or guilt or a sense of entitlement. Vengeance was a powerful tool, but left unchecked, it opened a person to rash acts and reckless behavior—just look at Saw Gerrera and his people. 

No, this Phoenix Cell was cunning. They waited to strike, prepared themselves. And they had the conviction of their own righteousness without resorting to ruthlessness. The combination endeared them to the public, making them both worthy _and_ dangerous.

As incorrect as their belief was, it was to be admired. Like the Lasat. They had been a proud race, certain of the power of their Ashla, their godly version of the Jedis’ Force. They had—with few exceptions—fought with honor and anger and skill until the end, when the Empire proved itself too strong to be defeated.

And they would prove it again. Very soon…

***********

“Haven’t really got much in the way of grub or shelter, but what I have, you’re welcome to share.”

Kanan looked back at Ryder Azadi as the former governor walked up to him from behind.

“Thank you, Governor,” he replied, watching the moons rise in the canyon. “We have supplies on the _Phantom._ We’d be happy to add to your stocks here.”

Azadi nodded. “You planning on leaving, then?” he asked, leading the way back to his improvised shack. 

“I don’t know,” Kanan replied truthfully, taking a seat. “We honestly hadn’t thought past Ezra’s parents.”

“Where is Ezra?”

Kanan touched his Padawan’s mind briefly but left him to his silence. “Up on the rocks. He’s taking this hard.”

“I don’t think you ever take it well, do you? No matter how old you are when your parents die.”

There was no way to point out that Kanan had been Ezra’s age before he even really knew a person who knew their parents—the soldiers he’d fought with didn’t even _have_ parents in any sense of the word. Jedi and clones lived a very different existence than most people, and as much as he cared for Depa and for his fellows at the Temple, it had been shown to him, time and time again, that parents were just… different.

Didn’t make him miss his master any less, right at the moment.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe Mira was right all those years,” Azadi continued, handing Kanan a small plate of cooked roots. “Ephraim knew what Ezra’s chances were. Knew he’d either face the danger of the streets or the Empire would find him. That they’d…” Kanan nodded to show he knew exactly what that would mean for a child. “But Mira was always sure he was out there somewhere. Free. Said she had a feeling.”

 _She had a feeling._ Words were powerful things. Markers of truth. Kanan watched Azadi carefully.

“His transmission got to the prison about three months ago, smuggled in by one of the guards. Ephraim recognized his voice right away—I thought it was just wishful thinking until the kid started talking.” He sighed sadly, a reminiscent smile shadowing his face. “It was like listening to one of their broadcasts, back in the day.”

_“We are rebels, fighting for the people. Fighting for you.”_

Kanan shut the door forcibly on all that came after. By the time Ezra’s parents had heard his voice on that transmission, all of that was over and they’d joined Phoenix Squadron. _All of that is over._

“Even before that, when we started hearing word of rebel activity here on Lothal last year, Mira was sure Ezra was involved.” Azadi smiled at him. “Looks like he was found by the right people, huh?”

Kanan grinned fondly. “Actually Ezra found us.” He chewed his futouo root, thinking about how quickly Ezra had turned from his selfish Loth-rat existence to the compassionate young man he was growing into. He’d been born to it as much as Hera had, in his own way. “All he’s wanted since we met was a free Lothal. Guess he’s a lot like his parents in that.”

“Kid always had a way about him,” Azadi said, as if probing around something. “Something special, you know? I think Ephraim was more worried about the Empire finding _him_ than he was about being captured himself. Tried to make sure Ezra was out of the house whenever they’d transmit. Just in case.” His face fell. “Guess it was a good thing he did.”

Kanan took a leap and came right out and said it. “Did his parents know he was Force-sensitive?” he asked.

Azadi went silent and guarded. Not surprised, though. Not in the least.

“I felt him the first time we crossed paths,” Kanan offered, just as guarded, but showing a sliver of truth. “He’s hard to miss.”

“That’s what Mira was always afraid of,” Azadi said after a long, thick moment, breathing deeply. “They never told him anything—Hell, I think only they and maybe two of us others even knew. I guess we all thought they’d have time to explain it to him later. Though how they’d’ve dealt with it with the Jedi gone….” He looked at Kanan speculatively, but Kanan wasn't admitting to anything he didn't have to. “I’m guessing you know what the Empire does to kids like him.”

A parade of inquisitors and two young babies flashed in his mind and Kanan nodded. “Yeah.” He sighed. “He kept his head down after they were captured. If I hadn’t been there, he’d probably still be hiding out in Capital City.” _Which might have been safer, really._

“They taught him that, too—from the time he could walk. If he was separated from them, hide. Live free another day.” 

The words he’d found in his own mind over Mustafar shocked Kanan’s system for a moment. 

“I’m glad he’s got someone now,” Azadi said. “Someone who understands. Mira would be glad to know you.”

Kanan liked to think so. He wished, not for the first time, that Ezra had had _someone_ during those years of waiting on his parents’ fate. Wished he hadn’t been so alone. He remembered what it was like, and it was a pain that never seemed to fully heal.

“Night’s getting on,” Azadi said finally as they finished their meal. 

“I’ll wait on Ezra in the _Phantom,_ ” Kanan told him, standing up. He wasn’t planning on sleeping because he knew from experience that Ezra wouldn’t be able to. He’d come on this trip so Ezra wouldn’t be alone _now,_ and he’d make sure of that any way he could.

“Poor kid.” Azadi sighed. “I really did hope Mira was right. I hoped she’d live to see him, to tell him how proud she was of him.”

Kanan nodded, bowing out and heading into the moonlit night. He was still waiting for those words from his own master, and he’d _known_ how proud she was. He wondered if Ezra, seven years old and terrified, had ever really understood how proud his parents could be. How proud Kanan and Hera were now, though they weren’t the parents whose approval he was seeking.

He looked up at the rocks, at Ezra, sitting with his knees to his chin in a pose Kanan knew too well from the last year and a half. Ezra knew he had friends, knew he had family. But sometimes, the old habits were the only ones that worked, and hiding was his only way to come to terms with whatever he was thinking about.

Kanan would give him until dawn. Give him space and time and, when Ezra was ready, a solid ear, to listen to anything he had to say.

He couldn’t give him any more. But he could give him that.

*********

tbc…


	10. Another Generation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "A Princess on Lothal".

“This is Imperial shuttle 6943-Alpha, requesting approach on vector 2-6-4.” 

Leia’s own crew, “stranded” with her on Lothal, had been the ones to fly her home. Lyste had come up with another shuttle (apparently they were in short supply on Lothal—Alderaan wasn’t the only world that had a theft problem), but had apologized that he couldn’t send a contingent back with her. Which was entirely to her liking, though she’d been snitty about it in public. To keep up appearances.

“Imperial shuttle 6943-Alpha, you are clear to land.”

Leia breathed a sigh of relief. _Home._ She looked out the viewscreen and smiled to see her father on the landing platform, staring up at them. She’d thought he was on Coruscant, but she was very glad to see him.

“Leia,” he called to her as she descended the ramp, his voice concerned as he played to what were, no doubt, at least a dozen Imperial spies in the near vicinity. “Are you all right? I heard what happened on Lothal and rushed home to make sure you were unhurt!”

She drew herself up and looked imperious. She was good at that, and it bought her a lot of leeway. The Empire thought her no more than a spoiled princess, and she’d play off of that for as long as she possibly could in this rebellion.

“Other than being _stunned_ as a result of the local garrison’s incompetence, I’m all right, father,” she promised him. She poured the regret on thick. “But the transports were stolen! All those supplies, just gone. What will the people of Lothal do now?”

Her father led her into the family estate, moving at a reasonable pace. She hadn’t been kidding when she told Kanan and Ezra what would happen if the Empire could prove their suspicions. She’d been raised to be paranoid. To play to expectation.

“We will help the people of Lothal, Leia,” he promised her, steering her toward her wing of the sprawling home. “Right now, I’m just glad you’re all right.”

She nodded, weak and tired and helpless. Right up until the shielded door closed behind them. The anteroom of her suite led into a sitting room with no windows. The entire area was opaque to sound-sensing and visual bugs, swept daily for Imperial devices. Not the safest place in the galaxy, but one of the safest on Alderaan.

Her father hugged her and allowed a smile to break out. “Well done, Leia,” he praised her. “Your plan worked perfectly.”

Leia snorted at that and walked forward into her sitting room, seeking her favorite chair. “I don’t know if I’d say perfectly, but thanks to Phoenix Squadron, we got the results we wanted.”

“Were there any casualties?” he asked, concerned.

“Not on our side,” she promised.

“Good,” he murmured. He found a seat himself and looked over at her. “But you’re troubled.”

She supposed she was. “Ezra Bridger,” she said quietly. “I hadn’t thought about the fact that he really is my age. He’s young to be so involved in the fight.”

Her father gave her that gentle smile of his. “Your birth mother was younger than you when she joined the fight to save the Republic, Leia,” he reminded her. “We all do what we must.”

Her mother. Her birth mother. A woman she knew as a shadow in her mind and an unnamed paragon of resistance to tyranny. She remembered the picture Ezra had been looking at: himself at seven or eight, his parents loving... “His parents died. Recently.”

Her father's face fell. “I wondered. I heard that an Imperial prison had had an escape, and that several prisoners had been killed. Captain Syndulla and Kanan Jarrus have been looking for them for a long time, I think.”

Kanan Jarrus. “I’m starting to think your stories about the Jedi aren’t all make believe,” she told him teasingly. “What I saw Kanan do on Lothal shouldn’t have been possible.”

Her father laughed the laugh he gave out while remembering the past. Before the world truly changed. “A wise Jedi once told me, all things are possible through the Force—with a fair amount of work.”

Which made Leia smile. 

“The Jedi aren’t here for us now—with notable exceptions,” he reminded her. “Leia, what Kanan did on Lothal—what all of you did—will make a difference. But the real difference will be made by people like Ezra. People like you. Those who fight—”

“—because we can,” she finished, rolling her eyes at him. “You’ve given this speech before.”

Her father rose. “And I shall give it again. Repetition doesn’t make it any less true.” 

No. No, it didn’t. 

“Now, your mother is waiting to see you in the royal quarters. If you’re here too long, the Imperial contingent will begin to think you’ve succumbed to a case of the vapors after your harrowing adventure.”

Leia laughed at that, rising as well and seeing her father out. “I’ll have to change,” she told him firmly. “A princess simply cannot be seen in the royal quarters dressed like a common woman.”

Her father walked forward, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her forehead gently. “You are many things, Leia Organa,” he told her, looking into her eyes with affection. “But you will _never_ be common.”

***********

The holo of his parents wasn’t up on the projector, but Ezra saw them in his mind anyway, overlaid on the stars outside the nose gun. He didn’t see the young couple who’d been carrying a playful child. He saw them as they had been when they died. As the worn man and woman who stood with him on the memory of his tower and told him to be strong.

And he would be. It was the easiest promise he could make, really. He’d be strong because they raised him to be. Because Kanan and Hera would help him to be.

Because his new family wouldn’t expect anything less from him, either.

He wondered, without as much pain as he would have thought it would cause, what would have happened if they’d found his parents alive. In the _Phantom_ , on the way back to Lothal, he’d suddenly realized that, if they found his parents, his life on the _Ghost_ would be over. No Hera mothering him. No Kanan teaching him and guiding him and supporting him. No Zeb, no Sabine...

“Can’t sleep?” 

Ezra looked up, unsurprised to see Kanan behind him, reflected in the window of the front guns. If anyone was looking for Ezra Bridger, this was the place to find him, right? Everyone knew this was where he went when he needed time alone. 

And they always gave it to him.

“I’m okay,” he promised Kanan. “Just thinking.”

“I wish things had worked out differently, Ezra,” Kanan told him, moving farther into the little space so he was standing next to Ezra’s chair. “I wish we could have found them sooner.”

“Thank you for looking. It… meant a lot.” That they’d been looking for them. That they wanted him to have a home. A different home. His _real_ home.

“Ezra, you know we’re your family,” Kanan said gently. “That’ll never change. But we’ll never replace your parents. We’d never want to.”

“I know.”

And he did. And in a flash, he suddenly realized that his parents would never want to replace his new family, either. How it would have worked out, Ezra couldn’t say, but deep down, he admitted to himself that his parents would have wanted him to do what he was doing now. Even if they were alive.

“Mom and Dad would have made great rebels,” he commented, his tears showing in his voice and on his face and completely unapologetic. 

“They already did, Ezra,” Kanan assured him. His calming hand was on Ezra’s shoulder. “They raised a pretty good one, too.”

 _“If we don’t stand up, Ezra, who will?”_ His dad’s words rang in his mind, a comfort instead of an ache.

“I’m glad Ryder is going to fight,” he said, because he wasn’t sure what else to say. “I’m glad you could convince him.”

“I didn’t convince him of anything,” Kanan told him. “That was all you. If you can keep fighting, after all you’ve lost, why can’t he?”

“Yeah,” Ezra whispered. 

“It’s been a long few days,” Kanan pointed out, with no hint of command in his voice. “Think maybe you could get some rest?”

Ezra nodded, slipped out of the gunner’s chair, and wrapped his arms around Kanan hard. He didn’t have to wait more than a few seconds of shock before Kanan wrapped his own arms around him in kind.

“I think you would have liked them, Kanan,” he murmured.

“They were a lot like you, from what I’ve heard,” Kanan whispered back, his hug warm and centering and _right_. “I think I’d’ve loved them.”

**********

tbc….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently the center of the season is all fluff and sap to me. Hmm....


	11. A One-Minute Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "Protector of Concord Dawn."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, but a discussion I felt needed to be had.

Kanan stayed in the background. He let Sabine have her time. He drank in the reality that Hera was talking and moving and on the mend. He just… stood there and felt at peace. 

“We should let you sleep,” Sabine said finally. Probably a good choice, since Hera was pretty much asleep already.

Hera nodded dreamily, then smiled up at Kanan as he leaned down and kissed her. “We’ll talk later,” he whispered.

“‘Kay.” And she was gone, eyes closing as she fell into sleep she so dearly needed.

“Kanan, can we talk for a minute?” Sabine asked. There was no bite to her voice, but Kanan sensed it regardless.

“Sure,” he offered. She led him toward the _Liberator_ ’s flight deck instead of the _Ghost_ , and puzzled as he was, he let her. It was ship’s night—dead in the middle of ship’s night, in fact—so there was no one around. _Not in front of the boys._

Sabine took a deep breath and turned to him and the determination on her face had him suddenly thinking Hera was standing before him.

“We need to talk about what happened on Concord Dawn,” she said calmly.

Kanan nodded. He’d thought he would have to be the one to bring this up. “You’re right,” he agreed. “We do. Sabine—”

“You said you trusted me,” she cut in, throwing his entire monologue about duty and responsibility and mastering your emotions into a tailspin. 

“I…” he tried instead.

“I knew what Hera wanted and I knew what you had planned and you _said_ you trusted me.”

“And then you called Fenn Rau out on deck for a fight to the death!” he blurted out. Not the most considered and diplomatic response, granted, but true.

“And _then_ I told you to _trust me_.” She paced away from him a few steps, then paced back. “I was captured, Kanan. Captured by fellow Mandalorians.” Her feet repeated their angry pattern, pacing back and forth, back and forth. “ _I_ know my people, okay? If I had done anything else other than call Fenn Rau out, I would have been killed— _we_ would have been killed.”

Kanan wilted. Because, of course, he hadn’t seen it that way. “Sabine, you were so angry about what happened to Hera—”

“So were _you_!” she countered. “I didn’t accuse you of not doing your job—worse, of not doing _her_ justice.”

He had no defense to that at all, so he let her have her say.

“I knew what I was doing. I’m not a kid anymore—and honestly, I was dealing with Mandalorian politics before you were. And I’m _better_ than that," she added, hurt thick in her voice. "I wasn’t lying, Kanan. I’ve been raised right.” 

He remembered his own words too clearly. _“Sabine, you do this, you’re no better than him.”_

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, not moving because she needed a stationary target. “You’re right. I didn’t trust you enough, and I should have. But what happened to Hera…” The image of her ship, busted and crushed and drifting... What happened had clouded his judgement more than he’d thought. “I was trying so hard not to be angry, I wasn’t seeing the big picture.”

“You can’t do that again, Kanan,” she warned, and again, he saw not the sixteen year old they’d adopted—the one who’d threatened to shoot him after their first mission together—but a mature woman, making the right decisions. “We’re a team," she reminded him, "and the trust has to be there.”

“You’re all grown up,” he said, almost too quietly to be heard. Her face softened, so he added, louder, “I won’t make the same mistake again, Sabine. I promise.”

“Good,” she said, as if that solved everything. She straightened up and took a deep breath. “Now, I’m starving.”

Apparently it _did_ solve everything.

“Pretty sure we have some bantha meat in the deep freeze,” he offered.

“Oh no,” she claimed, knowing where that was leading. “I’m not cooking, you are.”

Kanan let her lead the way back to the _Ghost_.

“What if we only have rycrit?” he asked.

“Then you’re learning how to make my bantha stew,” she told him.

“Not the only thing I’ll have learned from you today,” he replied.

He caught the shadow of a smile on her face. “Darn right it’s not.”

************

tbc...


	12. Dreams of His People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during and after "Legends of the Lasat."

A tapestry of suns…

Alexsandr stared at the expanse before them, at the swirling masses of nascent stars, each flowing into the next in an impenetrable fabric. A half-forgotten child’s tale ran through his mind, even as his destroyer bore down on the rebels.

_Long ago, in Wild Space, the People sought entrance to the galaxy, to search for the world long prophesied. Their greatest warrior travelled through long and painful space, that he might stand at the end of the world to beg permission of the Guardians of the Sungate. A tapestry of suns, stretched tight across the entrance, denied access to the unworthy. Only those of pure mind and devout soul were given the right of passage, a key passed down to those who held to the old beliefs._

The imploded star cluster before them certainly lived up to the myth, though he was seeing it from the other side. He couldn’t remember much more to the People’s fate. He’d been an active child and had little time for his mother’s stories. She was a teacher, and likely had more of them than she had been able to tell before her untimely death. Not all of her tales were of Human origin. The People could have been anyone. 

They could have been the Lasat, for all he knew.

Onaka, fool that he was, and Ezra Bridger, an even greater fool for trusting him, traded words over the comms as Alexsandr himself watched the startlingly beautiful anomaly before them. 

He would give the rebels their choice: destruction at his hand or a chance at an Imperial trial, at survival for another day. He had no question as to which they would choose, caught as they were between the star and the supernova.

“I give you one minute to prepare for boarding,” he told them quietly, “or to be destroyed.”

“Why not simply open fire?” Konstantine asked him.

Alexsandr rolled his eyes. “They are a worthy enemy, Admiral,” he told him, more sure of that fact after every meeting with them. “They deserve a moment to make their peace.”

_And so the People’s greatest warrior, well-loved and strong, strove toward the entrance. But the People’s enemies also sought the fabled world beyond the tapestry and sent their own man, who betrayed the People’s faithful knight and took his key, presenting it to the guardians as if it were his own._

“Thirty seconds, sir,” one of his lieutenants called into the stillness. 

_The guardians allowed him access. But their favor was fickle, for the tapestry of suns knew well of his treachery. His mind and soul were sullied and his travel through their fabric ended in his demise._

“Time, sir.”

“Your time is up, rebels,” Alexsandr told them, certain he would hear Jarrus negotiating for their surrender. The Jedi were known for their skills in that arena, after all.

“Sir, the rebel ship is moving _into_ the anomaly.”

Alexsandr watched them, fascinated. What could they hope to gain? _A key passed down to those who held to the old beliefs..._

“Such a nasty place,” Onaka whinged in his periphery. “Why would they go in there?”

“Because they believe they can,” Alexsandr answered. But this would not be how it ended. “Launch fighters to slow them down.” He would capture them. Oh, the irony of saving them from their own convictions…

But as he watched, the hull of the _Ghost_ crackled with the power of the star cluster before them yet remained undamaged, while his TIE fighters snapped like toys, far behind the rebel craft.

“Sir…” His lieutenant’s voice was wary, as the anomaly made itself felt on their own ship.

And still the _Ghost_ advanced.

No. No, this was _not_ the way this would _end_. “Open fire!” He would have them, one way or another. 

Too late, though. Much too late. The cannons’ lasers simply shot off into the anomaly’s gravity wells, not a one of them hitting the target. His own ship bent and creaked around him.

_His travel through their fabric ended in his demise._

Onaka made some comment, swallowed by the sound of the ship crying around them. The whole craft lurched and Alexsandr held his footing only by grabbing the command chairs before him.

Admiral Yularen’s words came back to him from many years ago: _“If you are to win the war, you must survive the fight.”_

“Let them go,” he barked. 

“What?” Konstantine blurted. He lay on the floor where he’d fallen. Might as well not have been there at all.

“To their destruction,” Alexsandr clarified. The ship he pursued was bright with the cluster’s power now. It wouldn’t be long. “Let them go.” The pilots before him gladly stopped their forward motion. “Pull back,” he commanded. “Full retreat.”

“Yes, you’ll get them next time!” Onaka exclaimed, as superfluous as Konstantine. Perhaps moreso. And so certain of the rebels’ ability to survive even this.

“No, I will watch them be destroyed.” Faith got one so far and no farther. This was not a leap the _Ghost_ could make.

He did not blink, barely breathed, as the ship he had hunted so zealously for so long flew closer and closer to dissolution, the crackles of energy around it almost brighter than he could manage. He waited for the end.

“Sir, their hyperdrive—”

Their hyperdrive. _Their hyperdrive?_ They had already committed to their own suicide—that would only hasten it. He watched, waiting for the explosion as the ship would collide with the immense gravity before it. The explosion that never came.

“Oh no,” Onaka muttered in the background as the ship disappeared. He sounded truly bereft.

But why should he? They had, against all logic, _made it._ Where under the stars were they _going_?!

“I believe we can finally report to Lord Vader that the Jedi and his apprentice are no more,” Konstantine declared smugly.

Alexsandr breathed away his shock. “You… are premature as usual, Admiral,” he replied coldly, turning and heading for his quarters. Now that this story was over, he wanted no more of the view. “If you expect to keep both your command and your head, I suggest you make note of their _escape_ instead.”

To parts unknown…

********

Zeb walked into the common area, a lightness to his step.

Lira San. Fabled new home of the Lasat People—except it hadn’t been. It was, in fact, the _old_ home of the Lasat people. Millions lived there. _Millions_. He chuckled to himself. He hadn’t felt so _not_ alone in years.

“See?” Ezra commented brightly, waltzing in after him and dropping into the bench by the dejarik table. “What did I tell you?”

“You tell me a lot of things, kid,” he quipped back, dropping into the large chair that always creaked when he sat in it. “If I listened to all of them, I’d’ve been dead months ago.”

“For a second there, I was afraid you were dead in the cockpit.” Ezra’s voice held that little quaver that seemed to hit him when one of the rest of them was in trouble. It had always been there, but it had gotten worse since he found out what happened to his parents.

“Apparently the Ashla and the Force work pretty well together,” Kanan said calmly as he arrived, his comment wiping the darkness off the kid’s face in an instant.

“So what was it like?” Ezra wanted to know. 

Zeb smiled. “Like home, only different.” He let the memory of the sound and the smell and the feel of it envelop him for a moment, and his smile broadened. “And crowded.”

Sabine pushed past Kanan, who was insisting on lounging in the doorway. Once Hera got them into hyperspace, she’d put a stop to that. 

“I’m sure the art and architecture must have diverged when your people left for Lasan,” Sabine commented. She was scrutinizing the drawings Chava had left on the floor, her holopad out and snapping pics. “I’d’ve loved to see it.”

“We can always come back,” Hera promised, smacking Kanan smartly on the arm as she entered. He rubbed the injury, but moved out of the doorway. “Once we have an extra week or two.”

Zeb sat back as Kanan and Hera found seats and Sabine nodded and left the room. To go sketch, no doubt. “Gonna be a long flight home,” Zeb agreed.

“But not as dramatic as the trip out here,” Hera shot back playfully. “I thought you were going to blow my ship apart with that bo-rifle of yours.”

“Yeah, how did that work?” Ezra asked. “I didn’t know it could do that.”

More memories swamped Zeb for a minute. For once in recent years, they didn’t bring him pain. “When a Lasat warrior is presented with his bo-rifle, he’s taught to modify the weapon. To bend it to Ashla’s will…”

“Just like the ancients,” Kanan murmured.

Zeb smiled gently. “Yeah.” 

“You did good, buddy,” Kanan offered after a moment.

“I did,” Zeb agreed, satisfied with himself for the first time in years.

“For a child,” Ezra put in. He was safely sandwiched in by Hera and Kanan—probably planned it that way, the little brat.

“I’m still debating who the fool was in all that,” Zeb growled.

“Hondo, of course!” 

Kanan smiled at Ezra’s immediate response. It stirred a memory. “Who is the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?” 

“What does _that_ mean?” Ezra demanded.

“It means the next time you come to me with a mission, it better not involve Hondo Onaka,” Hera scolded.

“Or Vizago,” Zeb put in. He hated that Devaronian.

“Or Lando Calrissian,” Kanan finished, rounding out the list.

“Don’t worry about that last one,” Ezra assured them all. He wormed past Hera and stood up, bristling with that energy that only the young had. “I’m hungry.”

“Then you’d better get cooking,” Kanan told him, firing up the dejarik table. “What do you think, Zeb? Want a game?”

Zeb grinned as the kid scampered off to feed himself. He was _home_. Lira San was the home of his people now, the place his bones could meet the universe one day, but for now, this ship, this family, was home.

“I’ll wipe the deck with you.”

*********

It was five hours later before Zeb sought his room, tired in that way that proved your worth. Ezra, whose energy had lasted until after his food (kid was going to start shooting up in height any time now, with all the eating and sleeping), was crashed out already, quiet and still. 

Zeb looked at his bo-rifle, safe in its spot, Sabine’s fanciful arrow marking its place. It seemed new again, like he could almost smell the paint. He laid back, content in a way he’d never thought to be again.

He looked up at the bottom of Ezra’s bunk and his breath caught. _Idiot_. He _could_ smell the paint. 

On the panel above him spread an image of Lira San, seen from space, painted in Sabine’s trademark style. The yellows of the dust cloud mixed with the brightness of the planet’s star… It was beautiful. And in the corner, neat and small but obvious, a drawing of Chava’s child. 

“Lest I forget,” he murmured.

“Hey,” Sabine called from the doorway, leaning against the jamb like she was Kanan or something. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said quietly. “I just thought you could… take it with you.”

“It’s nice,” he said gruffly, throat tight with an emotion he hadn’t had in a long time. Hope. “Thank you.”

“Any time, big guy,” she promised, closing the door after her.

Zeb fell asleep to dreams of his people.

***********

tbc….


	13. The Benefits of Holodrama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "The Call."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this is just blatant hurt/comfort.

The trip back to the fleet was going to be _way_ more comfortable than the one out here, Ezra thought, as he finished up in the ‘fresher, clean and warm. 

“Didn’t use all the water, did you?” Kanan asked, as Ezra walked out into the _warm_ hallway.

Ezra shook his head. “And risk Hera’s wrath? No way.”

“Zeb said something about throwing together something to eat,” Kanan replied, trading places with him. “You should eat, too—you look like talking to those Purrgil took a lot out of you.”

“It definitely wasn’t like making friends with lothcats, that’s for sure,” he agreed. He felt queasy. And _tired_. “I think I’m just going to get some sleep, now that I can do it without freezing to death.”

Kanan smiled his agreement and closed the ‘fresher door. 

Ezra got to his bunk and climbed up, half asleep already, but still thinking about the Purrgil. Their names for each other were based on what star they spawned near. Not names any normal sentients would know, but to them, as they traveled the stars, it was the history of the herd, built into each of their names. He bet you could track their path if you could figure out the Purrgil name for every star in the universe.

They were easily the most amazing things he’d ever seen….

He fell asleep to the sound of Purrgils entering hyperspace.

Zeb sat in the common area with his stew and caught up on a holonet show he’d missed a couple of times while they were rationing fuel. Not that they could just willy nilly waste it now, but his ears were _still_ freezing. He deserved some sort of comfort, right?

“Why do you watch this skrat?” Kanan asked, walking in and sitting across the table from him. “ _Tales of Court Intrigue_? Don’t you have enough intrigue in your life?”

Zeb shrugged. “It kind of reminds me of the royal family back home,” he said after a moment. Memories of home came easier now, though thoughts of individual people were still hard to bear. “We had a lot of intrigue there, too.” He watched the High Princess of Nagorana (an utterly _not_ veiled reference to Leia Organa, who was much nicer in person) order her minions around. “Course our royal court was less fancy dress balls and sex behind the scenes.”

Kanan smiled at that and watched the show with him for a while, heckling in all the right places. The human couldn’t stand it for too long, though, and eventually stood and stretched. “I’m gonna get Hera some caf and find my bunk.”

Zeb waved him on. The King of Nagorana (looking surprisingly like Bail Organa, who wasn’t a king and had no royal control over his people, but whatever) was planning to marry his daughter off to some prince from a nearby system. That wasn’t going to go down well—not when she was in love with that servant boy….

“Good night, Zeb,” Kanan said, amusement thick in his voice.

The second episode ended on one of those annoying cliffhangers, kriff it. Well, he was watching it so late that at least he only had to wait a few rotations for the next one. It was well into ship’s night. Hera was still up, he was sure, but Sabine had gone to bed long ago, before Ezra even. He’d heard Kanan’s door close a while back, but you could never be sure if he was meditating or sleeping. Kind of seemed like the same thing to Zeb.

He rose and stretched and yawned as quietly as he could before putting his dishes in the recycler and heading to bed.

He opened his door to the most kriffing awful sound.

“Ezra?” he called. What the hell had happened? The kid was fine when he saw him last!

Now though, Ezra’s breath was whistling and thick and wrong. Every inhalation sounded like he was gulping air, not breathing it. Every exhalation was worse, pushed through sludge… Zeb flicked on the light.

“Kid?” he called, walking to the bunks and looking at his bunkmate. He was pale, and his lips were _blue._ Not right for a human, not by a long shot. “Karabast.” He took the two steps to the door and stuck out his head. “HERA!”

He strode back to the kid, wondering what he should be doing. Wake the kid? Don’t wake him? 

“What’s going on?” Hera asked, pelting into the room and up to him. She climbed halfway up the ladder, stopping in shock once she got a look at the problem. “What happened!?”

“I have no idea,” Zeb told her.

“Get him down from there,” she offered reasonably. Zeb slid Ezra carefully off the bunk and into his arms, expecting him to stay asleep. 

Instead, Ezra’s eyes snapped open in panic.

Kanan was _instantly_ awake. Awake and terrified and suffocating and drowning and—

Wait….

“Ezra?” 

Hera met him at Ezra and Zeb’s door. “Something happened at the mining platform,” she told him. “He can’t breathe. He’s—”

“Panicking,” Kanan finished for her. He walked up to where Zeb was holding Ezra in his arms. The kid was bucking against the hold, his eyes rolling with terror.

“Ezra?” Kanan called, taking Ezra’s face in his hands and trying to project calm into the space between them. “Ezra, listen to me.”

“Can’t—” Speech dissolved into a coughing fit and Kanan clamped down on his own panic as Ezra’s lips were quickly graced by a light pink froth.

“I know,” Kanan continued steadily. “And we’re going to fix that, but I need you to calm down.”

Which was a great idea, but really wasn’t working. Ezra barely seemed to know he was there, consumed by both panic and a dense confusion. The skin around his eyes was going blue to match his lips.

“How long ‘til we reach the fleet?” Kanan asked Hera. Sabine was now at the door, looking in with wide and worried eyes.

“At least seven hours,” Hera replied. “Let’s get him to the med panel.”

“It’s probably the gas,” Kanan mused. He kept trying to push comfort toward his padawan, and Ezra’s confused mind kept batting it away.

“The gas?” Hera barked. Sabine cursed and pushed past all of them to run toward the med panel. “As in clouzon-36, ‘the gas’? You just said he was down. You didn’t say he _fell in the gas_!”

“Calm down, kid,” Zeb murmured, as Ezra kicked out, nearly hitting Hera in the head and almost dislodging himself from the Lasat’s grip. 

“He said he was knocked off the platform, into the pool,” Kanan explained, replaying his discussion with Ezra as they got back into the ship. “The Purrgil found his helmet and got it back on him before he passed out.” He sighed as he reviewed it again. “I think he was knocked out when he went in, though.”

Hera seemed like she wanted to say something, but kept her mouth shut. Her choice not to speak raised Kanan’s own anxiety and he tried to diffuse it, to provide only calm through his link with Ezra.

“Keep him sitting up,” Sabine ordered, as they arrived at the single measly panel that comprised the _Ghost_ ’s medbay. They really needed to do something about that. “He shouldn’t be lying down.”

“Hello, I am 2-1B Holographic Medical Assessment Unit 4359.” The med unit’s hologram reset every damn time the power went down. It was like meeting a friend for the first time six or seven times a cycle.

“4359, Ezra has inhaled an unknown amount of clouzon-36,” Sabine told it, her voice tight and worried.

“He was lying down for two hours before I went in there,” Zeb muttered, settling Ezra into the chair Kanan had yanked over from the dejarik table. Ezra was barely conscious, his eyes darting from Kanan to Hera to Zeb and back again. Kanan couldn’t be sure he even knew who they were, the confusion was so thick.

At least the sense of drowning was easing off.

“Clouzon-36,” 4359 said, searching its medical records. “Extremely toxic to humans. Non breathable.” The scanning field ran over Ezra’s body as the hologram spoke. Ezra was heaving, almost, with the effort to breathe. “What was the duration of contact with the gas?”

Kanan looked at Sabine to help with the answer, trying to think. “He called out to me from the gun platform… a minute before? Two?”

Sabine shook her head, watching Ezra wheeze. “I was kind of busy at the time.”

Chopper, sounding less acerbic than usual, since he was talking to another droid and not to the obnoxious organic units, told the holodroid that if Ezra had fallen off the platform right after the radio contact, which seemed likely given the record of an utterance from his comm unit directly after that discussion, then it was a lot longer. 5.45 minutes before the next radio contact.

Hera closed her eyes.

“5.45 minutes,” 4359 repeated in Standard. “Classified as extreme exposure. Diagnosis: acute inhalation injury, pulmonary edema, and severe bronchospasm.”

“We can see that!” Zeb growled, though Kanan would bet he hadn’t understood half of what the holodroid said. He looked up at Zeb and saw his ears stiff, fur on point. Ezra took that moment to grab Kanan’s hand _hard_ and cough up more bloody froth, and Zeb tensed up even more.

“Patient also suffering mild decompression and decreased temperature. These have exacerbated edema.”

Hera looked confused. “We were out on the hull,” Kanan reminded her. To which she simply nodded numbly. 

“Preferred treatment includes rewarming, full oxygen immersion, bronchodilator therapy, analgesics and cardiac monitoring. Anxiolytic as needed, once the patient is stabilized, due to medication and exposure side effects.” An oxygen mask popped out of the med unit and Sabine fit it over Ezra’s head while he fought her. 

“Come on, Ezra,” Sabine griped gently. “We’re trying to help here.”

“Kan—” Ezra croaked, locking wild eyes with him. The confusion in his mind was almost overwhelming, but Kanan breathed deep and let it pass over him. “Ka—”

“Right here,” he promised, squeezing the hand Ezra had used to grab him. 

“Administering bronchodilator now,” 4359 announced. The mask’s contents turned milky. “Analgesic injection advised.” A hypo popped from the unit. “Anxiolytic not advised until patient is stable.”

Kanan sighed. Right, because cutting down the anxiety wouldn’t do anything to make him feel better. A healing trance would be what Depa would have suggested. Unfortunately, meditation was impossible at this point. Even when the practice was drilled into you from infancy, Kanan knew from experience how difficult focus was when you were pretty sure you were dying.

“Breathe as deeply as you can, Ezra,” Hera murmured, grabbing the blanket they kept in the common room and spreading it over him. Ezra’s eyes jerked their focus to her and he tried to nod, but only succeeded in making the mask shake a little on his face. “You should start to feel better soon,” she told him.

Kanan waited, watching. He used his bond with his apprentice more than his eyes, feeling the acute suffocation ease off slowly over the next half hour, the confusion start to lift… Unfortunately, the panic got, if anything, worse. Each coughing fit was stronger, which should have made Kanan feel better, but for the pink froth that escaped the mask and dribbled down Ezra’s chin.

“You’re all right, Ezra,” Kanan promised him again and again. “You’re all right.”

“You should have told me as soon as he told you. Clouzon-36 is deadly, Kanan,” Hera gritted quietly, eyes on Ezra’s face. The blue around his eyes was, maybe, receding. “There was a reason you were all wearing masks.”

“I’m pretty sure he didn’t do it on purpose,” Kanan reminded her. He was trying to keep calm so that he had some distant hope of calming Ezra down. “Ezra, come on,” he called, his free hand on his padawan’s shoulder for extra support. “Take another breath for me.”

“Kan— Can’t. I—” Ezra coughed again and this time it seemed worse, doubling him over for a long moment as he sounded like something was ripping inside. Kanan started to wonder if he wouldn’t be better off unconscious.

“Oxygen levels are rising, but pulse rate is rapid and rhythm is erratic,” 4359 told them, as if they didn’t already know. “Probable cause: cardiac damage as a result of exposure. Course of action: advanced medical unit needed for further assessment.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Zeb grumbled, fear in the words. “Not really an option here.”

“I see,” 4359 replied. “Time to advanced medical unit availability?”

Sabine sighed. “Six and a half hours.”

4359 digested that. “Readministering bronchodilator now.”

The medications were clearly starting to take effect. Kanan could see Ezra’s breathing ease fractionally, see the blue tinge back off. But he remained on edge and frightened. Jittery.

“Kanan?” It was the first full word Ezra had said and it sounded like he was chewing crushed glass.

“Here,” Kanan assured him.

Ezra tried to keep it together. “Good,” he responded. One word. All he could do. 

Good. Good because he felt like someone had a Force grip on his lungs and was twisting them with every breath. Good because every muscle was twitching without twitching. Good because he had an awful sense of impending doom that he couldn’t shake, even though he knew, _knew_ , that Hera and Kanan wouldn’t let that happen.

“Cardiac stabilizing enzyme injection necessary,” 4359 said. Ezra flinched at the words. Kanan was there, a comforting presence in his mind, but he couldn’t calm down. His heart was racing and he was pretty sure he was going to vomit into this mask on his face, if he didn’t die before that happened.

“You’re not dying,” Kanan assured him steadily, reading his emotions if not outright reading his mind.

Funny, he vaguely remembered Hera saying something about Clouzon-36 being deadly. But maybe he misheard.

Sabine gave him an injection and the feeling of her rubbing the site afterward was like a billion hiddidee crawling all over the skin.

“Sorry,” Sabine whispered as he jerked away.

“No,” he said, trying to claw his way out of the jitters. “Sorry. Just feel like…” Breathing was _hard_. “Coming apart.”

And he did. He felt like he was coming apart at the seams. Like he was going to vibrate into atoms at some point soon. And all while suffocating. 

_Thought the Purrgil liked me_ , he thought wryly.

“Oxygen level now within guarded parameters,” the holo droid said, and Ezra wondered muzzily what it had been before, if it was only guarded now. He felt like he was understanding more of what was going on around him, though, so he took that as a good sign. Right up until the last few minutes, everything had been blurs and echoes and barely-recognized faces.

But being clearer just made him more aware of the feeling of being overfull that had settled in his chest. Was it fluid, he wondered, drowning him for real? His heart skipped at the thought. Or was it just the fact that it was _so hard_ to get the breath out, once he’d gotten it in?

“Clouzon-36 is a small particulate gas,” Sabine was saying. She’d obviously pulled up what she could on the holonet—her classic coping mechanism in a crisis like this. “Causes a delayed response—probably why he seemed fine right after the fact.”

Oh good, so he could have just gone to sleep and not woken up. His already shallow breaths turned into pants at the thought. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down, but every time the air went in it _wouldn’t come out!_

“Respiration rate becoming excessive,” 4359’s voice never changed. 

“Ezra. Focus on me for a second.” Kanan’s voice, his calm presence in the Force, called to him and Ezra looked up, watching Kanan’s face sharpen in his vision. “I know it’s hard, but you need to try to slow your breathing.” 

He almost laughed, but that would probably kill him. So would taking the deep breath necessary to do what Kanan was asking him to do. He’d explain the problem, but that would take breath, too.

Everything required the one thing he couldn’t seem to get done!

“Okay,” Kanan murmured. “Okay, I got ya. Not happening.” He was trying to hide his frustration behind his concern and that calm, but Ezra felt it anyway. Kanan could probably just coast into full meditation like this, but that was beyond _him_.

“I— sor—,” he grated uselessly. His throat felt like it was coated in acid. “Sorry.”

Kanan gripped his hand hard. “It’s _okay_ , Ezra,” he promised. “You’re going to be okay.”

If he didn’t die. 

“The meds are probably making his anxiety worse,” Sabine said quietly. Like he wasn’t in the room. 

Though he kind of felt like he wasn’t—like he was just floating in the gas again, not a Purrgil in sight… 

“...anxiety medication?” Kanan was saying. Obviously whether they talked like he was in the room or not, he wasn’t going to catch all of it anyway.

“Anxiolytics are contraindicated by cardiac dysrhythmia,” 4359 scolded. 

“Hang on.” Zeb. Had Zeb been there the whole time? “Let me try something. Chopper, play that holoshow I was watching earlier.”

That drek with the bitchy princess? Chopper asked, disgust thick in the binary.

Ezra laughed involuntarily, which lit his whole chest on fire and he started coughing and couldn’t stop and crap dribbled out his mouth again and he was pretty sure that this was how he died.

“Breathe, Ezra,” Kanan urged, low and calm and safe, over the sound of his lungs ripping themselves to pieces. “Breathe.”

Actually, that was a little easier now. The next breath went in and most of it came out when he exhaled. He looked up at Kanan’s too-worried face and grinned weakly. He didn’t know if his master could see it through the mask, but Kanan relaxed a fraction.

“Just play the damn thing,” Zeb growled. He seemed really pissed off. Like, more pissed off than Chopper usually made him. Ezra looked up at his friend and took in the worry and the stress and the fear… Got it. Pissed off.

“Actually not a bad idea,” Sabine agreed. “When I was really sick as a kid, I used to watch _Knights of the Republic_. It would distract me.”

The few times he’d been hurt or ill, Ezra pretty much just hid until he was better. Alone on the streets wasn’t where you showed that kind of weakness. He didn’t remember much about being sick when Mom and Dad were around. Maybe he wasn’t a sickly kid…?

“I watched _Space Riders from Jilliak 5_ ,” Hera recalled. Ezra looked over at her and almost grinned at the reminiscent smile. “It was horrible, but it was diverting. Play the show, Chop.” She tapped Chopper on the head and the clang of the sound caused Ezra to jump. 

This just sucked. He was supposed to keep calm, but every single skrogging thing made him really, really _not_ calm.

 _Tales of Court Intrigue_ splashed into full hololife before them, and Ezra just stared for a second. Then he stared at Zeb. Then he stared back at the show.

“Really?” he asked, glad the entire word got out of his mouth without a crack. Would have spoiled the whole teasing effect if it hadn’t.

“Just watch it,” Zeb grumbled at him, the tips of his ears curling under in embarrassment. “It’s not as bad as you think.”

It really, really _was,_ though….

********

Kanan’s whole body relaxed halfway through the first episode. Ezra was still in trouble, still wheezing and coughing and pale and slightly blue, but the panic was easing off. And with that, his erratic heart and breathing slowed. He wasn’t okay, but he’d make it to the medical frigate.

“Nice thinking, big guy,” Kanan murmured, smiling up at Zeb, who was watching Ezra more than he was watching the show. Zeb nodded diffidently in response.

“Why… do they dress… like that?” Ezra asked, parcelling out the words with each breath. “Couldn’t… fight that… way.”

“Oh they do,” Zeb argued. “Swords and blasters and everything.”

“Set the… robes on fire,” Ezra replied.

Kanan chuckled at that, remembering a certain young clone who wondered the same thing about Jedi robes. Most of the masters had worn armor, but Master Billaba refused, and Caleb followed blindly. Kanan looked at Ezra struggling for breath and wondered whether Depa had hurt as much for him as he was hurting for his own Padawan now.

Hera stood up. “I’m going to get some caf,” she told Ezra quietly. Her eyes took in Kanan, and he got the hint. 

“Going to go help,” Kanan told him. He released Ezra’s hand for the first time in a long time, and Ezra let him. “You gonna be okay?”

Ezra nodded carefully, eyes still on the ridiculous show, and Sabine let Kanan know silently that she’d take care of him.

Kanan dropped into a chair by the table as soon as they entered the galley. His legs ached and he suddenly realized he’d been crouching beside that chair forever.

“How long?” he asked, watching Hera quietly make the caf. He reached out with the Force and read her, finding her calm. Actually calm, not Captain Hera in a Crisis calm. It was enough for him to drain the last of his own anxiety away.

“We’ll come out of hyperspace in four and a half hours.”

Kanan sat up straight, feeling his bones crack at the movement. “Really? Didn’t realize it’d been that long.”

Hera turned to him with a smile and two mugs. “That’s why you’re in here getting caf,” she told him bluntly.

He smiled at her logic, but it didn’t last. “Emotions like that are… contagious.”

“In the Force?” She sipped at her caf and her eyes prompted him to do the same.

“Yeah. A kid like Ezra, someone who’s strong… It can be overwhelming.” Just the lessening of it, as Ezra got distracted and involved in the holoshow was a breath of fresh air in a bad situation. 

Hera nodded, watching him closely. “I bet they just made you meditate when you got sick,” she teased.

“Actually, they did,” he agreed with a smile. “We didn’t really get sick, though.”

“Really? Never had bantha pox or… what’s a human equivalent to moodh’a?”

Kanan thought of the Twi’lek childhood ailment: high fever and blisters… “I don’t know. I’m sure there’s something.” Except that humans tended to benefit from most of the medical advances—a byproduct of being the victorious species in most recent wars.

“You never…?”

“Coruscant was a highly developed planet, Hera,” he told her. “And remember, I’m human. We had vaccines for everything.”

Hera took another sip. “I guess.”

“Got to hand it to Zeb,” Kanan said after a minute. “I wouldn’t have thought a bad holodrama would be just what the med droid ordered.”

“Speaking of,” Hera began.

“Yeah. We really need a medbay upgrade,” Kanan agreed.

**********

“That was… really bad,” Ezra wheezed as the second episode ended with not-Bail Organa walking in on not-Leia Organa and her servant boyfriend. 

Talking brought more coughing, but he tried to keep in mind that he _could_ breathe better for a few minutes after a fit. He felt really gross though, with all the crap he’d coughed up and all over himself. Sabine had produced a warm wet towel earlier, but since she wouldn’t let him take off the oxygen mask for even a second, and he didn't have the energy or desire to strip out of his clothes, it didn’t really fix the whole problem.

But all in all, he was feeling, well, not better. But _better_. Less certain that every breath would be his last, though his heart still skipped and jumped and raced at intervals from the feel of it. The hiddidee in his stomach and under his skin had all calmed down a bit while the three of them watched, while they traded jeers and pointed out the absurdities of the show….

“Hey, Zeb?” 

Zeb looked up at him. He’d taken a seat on the floor at some point during the viewing. “Yeah, kid?”

“Thanks.”

“We’re not going to watch more of this, though, are we?” Sabine asked. She was sitting in the chair by the data station, keeping a close eye on him. It was kind of nice.

And it was weird. He’d been injured before, even sick before, since he came on board, and the crew was always good about it, but this was… different. Long and terrifying and he kept having to get the stupid inhalation therapies that yes, made sure he didn’t suffocate, but also just jacked him up until he couldn’t think.

_“Thinking takes energy from healing.”_

Huh. Mom had said that once. A long time ago. He’d had… something. Something scary, right? High, high fever, an endless rash, coughing almost like what he’d been doing tonight… She and Dad had bundled him up on the couch and the three of them watched…

“ _Galaxy Rangers_ ,” he murmured, remembering the troop of humans and Rodians and their faithful droid, hunting down pirates and smugglers and traitors to the unnamed government.

“What?” Sabine’s voice held a _planet_ of derision. 

Ezra looked at her sheepishly. “We used to watch it when I was sick,” he explained.

 _We._ She got it, and her smile was a gentle one that he would have been annoyed by on any other day.

“Okay, Chop,” she announced, as Kanan and Hera walked back in. “Play it.”

The opening credits of _Galaxy Rangers_ ran in the air before them, and Ezra smiled the same smile he’d seen on Hera’s face before. It was horrible, but distracting.

This was definitely worse than the bitchy princess, Chopper informed him (though at least he didn’t hit him). The droid in this story was completely unrealistic and ineffective to boot. 

“Nothing like you, Chop,” Hera assured him as Sabine gave her the chair and found a space on the floor. “That’s why it’s a kids show and you’re real life.”

Kanan stood in the space between Hera and Ezra, looking relaxed and content (which did wonders for Ezra's own mood, because he definitely wasn’t dying if Kanan looked like that), and Ezra just stopped thinking and watched his holotoon. 

And healed.

*******

tbc...


	14. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "Homecoming."

“Quite a ship you have here, Captain Syndulla.”

At the sound of Kanan’s voice, Hera turned from her examination of the stars outside the landing bay of the Imperial carrier. He had gone to pick up the _Ghost_ where it had been moored to the _Liberator_. 

“Where’s my better ship?” she asked with a smile.

“Bay three has the most headroom, so I landed her there. The others will meet us later. Zeb and Ezra are helping with the security scans and Sabine is checking out whether there are any goodies we can pillage from your new baby.”

“We’re not pillaging anything,” Hera berated him.

“They have more than two dozen 53-A medical stations,” he commented.

“Okay,” she relented. “Maybe a little pillaging.”

Kanan grinned. “Thought you’d see it our way.” 

He started walking toward landing bay three and Hera followed, still wrapped in her thoughts. Like the good man he was, he let her stay that way for a while.

Her father was proud of her. Truly. She hadn’t felt his pride since she was seven and helped in the fight against the droid army, coordinating the other children during the evacuation when Master Di had sacrificed himself and his men to cover their retreat. Her mother’s death two years later had set Cham Syndulla on a course of obsession that Hera just couldn’t follow, and she was sure he’d never forgiven her for it. 

Until now.

“Hera?” 

She shook away her thoughts to find herself at the bottom of the _Ghost_ ’s ramp. Kanan was watching her, two steps ahead, his eyes sympathetic.

“You’re not thinking of jumping ships, are you?” he joked. “I’m hardly a suitable replacement pilot.”

Hera smiled up at him as he stood there, relaxed and handsome. She wondered what her father would think of the Jedi he’d heard so much about if he knew what he was to her. Her knight. Her copilot. Her love.

She suddenly had very little interest in what her father thought. 

Instead, she walked up to Kanan, her lekku swaying, twisting in that way that she knew he found so fascinating. “You have other talents,” she teased him. The crew was busy elsewhere, right?

Kanan stepped into her space, his breath on her skin. “I do?” he asked, voice deep. “And what would those be?”

Hera danced away when he would have wrapped a hand around her waist, and she made for the ladder. “If you want to come up to my office, we can review them.”

Kanan _never_ had to be told twice.

*********

Kanan stroked Hera’s Tchun idly, enjoying the afterglow of their wonderfully impromptu lovemaking. They didn’t get enough time together these days, and when they did, it always seemed they had something important to discuss.

It was nice, for once, just to _be_.

“So I finally took you home to meet my father,” Hera teased. “Doesn’t that mean something important in human culture?”

He grinned. “Some human cultures,” he allowed. “In mine, it would have gotten me drummed out of the Order.”

Hera snuggled into him and made no joke. She was careful about his life before Kanan Jarrus, and he appreciated that more than he could say.

And he also really didn’t want to think about that right now.

“I somehow think, if he knew about this, I’d probably drop a peg or two in his estimation,” he said instead.

Hera shrugged. “Not really his business, though, is it?”

Kanan stopped playing with her lek and stroked down her back, marveling, as he often did, at the complete hairlessness of her skin. Her scars, and there were more of them than a woman as young as she was should have, were soft and raised under his fingers. After this many years together, he knew every one.

“You should keep in touch,” he murmured, wondering whether that was going to get him slapped or not, but feeling the need to say it anyway. “Maybe go home for a proper visit?”

Hera was quiet for a long moment, but it was more considering than anything else. “Maybe one day,” she said quietly. “When Ryloth is finally free.” She raised her head and kissed Kanan lightly on the mouth, with tenderness instead of passion. “Thank you.”

Kanan initiated the next kiss, because she started it. “For what?”

“Being here,” she said simply. “Being family.”

“There’s nothing more important to me,” he told her truly. This ship was the reason he was willing to fight another war. At least with them as his compass, he could be sure it was a war worth fighting.

Hera’s grin was sweet and beautiful and so he _had_ to kiss it again.

“Ezra said the same thing,” she told him.

 _Annnnnd_ , that changed the mood entirely.

“What have we said about talking about the children at times like this?” he teased, though really, he didn’t mind. 

“Oh please,” she shot back, sitting up and crawling over him to sit on the edge of the bunk. “You humans have no stamina and you know it.”

Sadly, she wasn’t actually wrong there. But there were few species that _could_ keep up with the Twi’lek, so he didn’t feel too bad.

“We should probably go see how everyone else is doing,” she told him, getting dressed in a way that was more erotic than _putting on_ clothes should be. 

Kanan opened himself to the world outside Hera’s cabin. “Sabine’s back, but Zeb and Ezra aren’t.”

Hera grinned at his usual post-coital headcounting. She could laugh, but the unspoken rule of what happens in Hera’s cabin stays in Hera’s cabin didn’t need to be ruined by the two of them wandering out, half-debauched, and sullying what was left of Ezra’s childhood.

They’d already done it to Sabine—though Kanan figured she had seen a fair amount before she ran into them. She was entirely too knowing for a kid her age.

He pulled on his own clothes and the two of them walked out and into the common room.

“I was wondering when you two would finally come up for air,” Sabine teased.

Hera gave her a pointed look that completely failed to cow her, but then got distracted by what Sabine was doing. “Did you at least get permission before you stole it?” she asked, sighing.

Kanan looked at the gaping maw in their data center and at the large, well-stocked, very modern 53-A medical station standing in the middle of the room, waiting to be installed. He thought back to that _long_ trip back from the Purrgils’ asteroid field. Permission or not, they were keeping it.

“Commander Sato believes that, as a front line ship, the _Ghost_ should have up-to-date medical equipment,” Sabine answered, going back to her wiring.

“That doesn’t mean he gave you permission to take it,” Hera noted.

“Yes, Hera,” Sabine told her, her voice long suffering. “Commander Sato said I could keep it.” She smirked. “After I’d already pulled it out.”

Hera groaned. “I’m going to go get something to eat.”

Kanan gripped Sabine’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he told her.

She smiled up at him. “What can I say? This family deserves the best.”

Kanan couldn’t have agreed more.

*********

tbc...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much of a sex writer as a rule, peoples. Sorry for the fade to black.


	15. And Together to Survive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "The Honorable Ones."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my mind, Rika's accent is a mixture of so-Cal surfer and Manitoba. Go fig!

“Are you sure you’re okay, Zeb?” Ezra asked. 

Zeb shrugged, looking down at the kid as the crew moved to the common room. Hera went forward to check on things as Chopper got them off-moon and away from the area. The Empire would be here soon enough.

They’d pick up Kallus. Get him medical help…

Ah, what the kriff did he care, right? 

“I’m cold, I’m starving, and I’m tired,” he grumbled. And he was confused by the thoughts in his head, but his mental state, he’d keep to himself.

“Maybe what you need,” Sabine said brightly, “is a medical checkup.”

Zeb rolled his eyes. “Sabine—”

“Come on, big guy,” Kanan pushed jokingly. “She’s been dying to try it out.”

They all felt the _Ghost_ make the jump into hyperspace. Maybe Hera would be back in here soon enough to stop all this nonsense. 

“We haven’t had a chance to test it on someone who needs medical help,” Sabine argued.

“And you’re not going to now,” Zeb told her. “I’m—”

“—fine,” Kanan finished for him, watching him too kriffin’ closely. “You’re limping.”

“My pads are frozen!” he protested. He wasn’t getting out of this, was he? 

“Frozen pads?” Ezra exclaimed cheekily. “Sounds like that could be a medical emergency.”

“Only medical emergency around here is going to be _you_ if you try to scan me with that thing.”

“At least then I could test _that thing_ ,” Sabine said reasonably.

“Hey!” Ezra cried out in response.

“I think maybe it’s time you all gave Zeb a break,” Hera said as she walked in the door. Rex followed after and gave Zeb a nod before taking a seat at the dejarik table.

“Thank you,” Zeb replied, heading for the galley—where he’d _been_ heading all along.

“Especially since I know he wouldn’t want to go into our next operation in anything other than top shape,” Hera continued. 

Zeb stopped short of the galley doors and hung his head. 

Kanan came over and patted him on the back. “It won’t be so bad, buddy,” he promised. He lowered his voice. “Come on. We were worried, Zeb.”

“All right, fine,” Zeb growled, walking over to the stupid medcenter.

Sabine beamed and pressed the button to begin the diagnostic.

“Hello!” The new med droid was perkier than the last one, but still a hologram. “I am MedCenter 53-A, designation six-four-five. Who will I be seeing today?”

Sabine grinned and prodded Zeb to stand in front of the sensors. “Once we introduce ourselves, we won't have to do it again. The 53-A retains its full memory, _even_ after a power loss.”

“What, are you selling the things?” Zeb griped.

“You’ll be seeing Zeb, 645,” Sabine told it, ignoring the jibe.

A table started to extend from the center.

“No table,” Zeb barked irritably. “I can stand just fine.”

“Very well!” 645 agreed, retracting the table. The scanner ran over him for a minute before the holodroid began listing out its findings like it was advertising a rare speeder. “Zeb’s temperature is 38.7 standard Imperial degrees. Zeb is dehydrated and has some minor cranial impact injuries.”

Was that from the crash or falling off the wall a million times or diving away from that creature? So many choices. 

“Ugh! _No_ personality,” Sabine lamented. “I’ll have to see if I can download a better one…”

Oblivious to the criticism, 645 continued. “Zeb also has multiple bruises, particularly to the right shoulder, scapula, and lower vertebrae, consistent with blunt force trauma, along with abrasions and two lacerated pads on his right foot.” 

That last was definitely from tossing Kallus. The human’s bo-rifle had sliced him when he activated the pike to try to save the agent’s life. Now that he was thawing out, that foot was starting to ache.

“Numerous muscle strains and minimal tearing of ligaments in both arms and the right leg.”

Because Kallus was _heavy_.

“Diagnosis: Moderate hypothermia and trauma. Prognosis: Full recovery. Recommended course of treatment: Temperature should be returned to Lasat nominal 42 degrees. Foot injury should be disinfected, sealed against contamination, and watched for signs of impending secondary infection, and Zeb should receive metabolic boosters and analgesics, sustenance and fluids. Zeb is counseled to rest.”

“See? _Now_ , I’m going to get something to eat,” he grumbled. “Droid’s orders.” 

Zeb walked away from the medcenter—or tried to. Kanan stopped him with a gentle hand on his chest. The human didn’t look too worried, but the kid next to him did. Zeb grudgingly admitted to himself that the damn holodroid had made quite a list of it.

“Analgesics and metabolic booster dispensing,” 645 announced. 

Sabine took the bag of medicine and handed it to Zeb. She also took a skin sealant from the medcenter and looked at him expectantly. For some reason, it all just _bugged him,_ and he considered—for about fourteen seconds—just pushing past Kanan and letting them all go swing. 

But Sabine’s expectant eyes were also Sabine’s slightly-but-not-really-worried eyes, and those damn things always got him in the end. With a sigh, he balanced on his left foot and raised his right for her to treat.

“Ouch,” Ezra commented unnecessarily, peering at the damage. “What’d you cut it on? Looks like a knife.”

Stupid perceptive kid. “Ice can be as sharp as durasteel, kid,” he told him. Sabine got a cloth to clean a surprising amount of blood out of his foot fur and then continued with the droid’s directions. The disinfectant stung, but the sealant went on right after and the sting was over quickly. He glared at Kanan’s hand which couldn’t really hold him back but was at least balancing him a little as he stood on one foot. He was unaccountably just… angry. Off-kilter. “Can I _go_ now?”

Kanan was slightly surprised at his reaction, but moved out of his way. 

“You know we’re just worried about you, Zeb,” Hera put in quietly. “We all saw you headed for Geonosis, and when we didn’t find you there….”

Zeb took a deep breath and tried to shake off his funk. “Yeah,” he offered finally. “Thanks for finding me before the Empire could.”

 _“Cooperate and you’ll get a trial,”_ Kallus had said. Zeb didn’t miss that the human hadn’t said he’d get a _fair_ one.

“You knew we wouldn’t stop looking until we got you back,” Ezra replied staunchly.

And Zeb finally smiled. Because yeah, he knew.

***********

An imperial destroyer was a massive ship, but compared to the bulk of Geonosis, it would have been a speck. That didn’t stop Alexsandr from searching the skies of the frozen moon for one. For hours. He knew he should switch the beacon back to the encoded Imperial frequency it originally held—increase the likelihood that he’d be found by the right people, but…

_“I’ll take my chances with the cold, and whatever we’re sharing this hole with.”_

He _could_ see a long gray smudge of debris across the face of Geonosis. The remains of Project Stardust. What the project had been—like the destruction or removal of the Geonosian inhabitants—wasn’t something Alexsandr had spent time wondering about.

_“Chase the answers and maybe you’ll learn the truth.”_

He snorted in derision. He would have thought a man like Garazeb Orrelios—Captain of the Lasan High Honor Guard, a man who had given the command that led his people into battle—would have understood. The precision of following orders was where victory lay. Those who deviated were often the first ones cut down in a war such as this. And there were simply things you were… “better off not knowing,” he mumbled uncertainly.

Admiral Konstantine would return soon. 

When Alexsandr had planned this ambush—using a turned rebel sympathizer to plant information about the abandoned project in Geonosian orbit—he’d left strict orders for the Admiral to return either when summoned or when a full rotation had elapsed without check-in. Alexsandr’s chrono told him that second time limit had come and gone three hours ago, which meant the _Relentless_ was somewhere up there, looking for him.

 _Hopefully, the_ Ghost _made its escape before their arrival._ The perverse and traitorous thought flitted through his mind and he dismissed it quickly. One day of adversity with the enemy should not engender compassion. 

_“ZEB! Ah, Zeb! You made it!”_ It had been interesting to watch the Lasat’s friends crowd ‘round...

Despite his unwilling slumber earlier, exhaustion pulled at him, and Alexsandr’s eyes closed against his repeated attempts to keep their gaze fixed on the planet above, waiting for the reassuring outline of an Imperial transport coming to answer his transponder’s signal.

 _Orrelios had been warm…_ He jerked awake from an unwary doze, shaking off the thought. It was beyond freezing now.

At least the meteorite was still giving off heat….

***********

Zeb managed food and drink and even a bit of time with his crew before he felt himself drifting.

“Better get to your bunk,” Kanan warned him. “Not sure I want to carry you there.”

“You’re a lightweight,” Zeb snapped back playfully. “You could barely carry the kid.” 

“Hey,” Ezra piped up, saying everything that came into his head, as usual. “I wonder what happened to Kallus?”

Zeb kept his voice level and told the truth. “No idea, kid,” he growled. And then he lied. “And I don’t much care.”

“I’m sure he and what’s left of his team on the construction module have been picked up by the Empire by now,” Hera groused. “Might even have had a ship hidden there.”

 _Fat lot of good that’d do him,_ Zeb thought. His eyes closed in exhaustion—as much mental as physical.

“Get some sleep, Zeb,” Kanan suggested again.

Zeb nodded, glad for the exit before they started talking more about Kallus. He rose and limped to his room, strangely glad to be alone for the moment.

The _Ghost’s_ corridor had been pleasantly temperate, but his cabin was outright warm, and Zeb smiled absently at Hera’s consideration. He paused as he placed his bo-rifle in its spot, lining it up with its arrow.

_“I didn’t take it as a trophy. The Lasat guardsman I faced… He fought well—died with honor. He gave me the rifle.”_

The Boosahn Keeraw wasn’t a gesture that was made frivolously. A Lasat guardsman swore an oath to die with his weapon in his hands rather than surrender it to a lesser foe. Zeb's soldiers were the best Lasan had—but Kallus was... maybe... better. Zeb wondered who that guardsman was. The palace grounds had been in such chaos there at the end… He couldn’t be sure.

And why was he keeping what happened on that moon a secret? It wasn’t like anyone would have expected him to just kill the Imp and have done with it. Not when he was injured and helpless. 

_“That_ is _the order of things. The strong survive and the weak perish.”_

“Not on my watch,” Zeb muttered.

He flopped onto his bunk, gazing up at the painting of Lira San that still sent a thrill through him just to look at.

_“It wasn’t supposed to be a massacre.”_

But it was. It was, and while Kallus might not have been the one giving the orders—and really, he’d given Zeb two different stories here, so how was he to know which one was the truth?—he’d still taken part. He’d still used those _things,_ disassembling Lasat like they were droids to be disposed of…

_“I’ve put it behind me.”_

But he hadn’t at all, and he knew it.

So why in the name of Ashla was he wondering whether Kallus was already dry and warm on his destroyer? Why was he protecting the guy—because yes, the rebellion would treat him fairly, but he’d still be a prisoner—by keeping his location under wraps?

Why did it matter?

***********

Alexsandr woke to the heat of the jungle and the moans of the battlefield. Single, focused laser blasts went off at intervals. Methodical. Murderous. He steeled himself to move and found he couldn’t. A tree had come down in the mortar attack that knocked him out, and the way it had sandwiched him against a rock beneath him had crushed a vertebra. His lower body was deadweight.

He could hear someone begging in Bocce. Ulitan. The boy had been a spacer his entire childhood before he joined the Imperial army. The Empire frowned on languages as "coarse" as Bocce, but when the measured laser blast came, he died weeping for mercy in his native tongue.

Alexsandr tried to drag himself with his hands, claw himself free. But all he managed to do was to rob himself of breath and sight as the pain in his upper body nearly sent him back to oblivion.

 _“Stand up. Fight back.”_ Words in a foe’s voice, from years in the future, rang through his head, and while he couldn’t do the former, he scrabbled in the humus and leaves trying to unearth his blaster, determined to do the latter. He looked beyond the trunk that held him down, aware of the blood that was now pouring from a tear in his belly that had been held tight by the tree’s weight.

What he saw froze him solid.

A huge warrior prowled through the carnage, a repeater in his hand. The repeater that, as Alexsandr watched, ended another soldier’s life as it clearly had Ulitan’s moments ago. The warrior was Lasat, massive and brutal looking, with dark blue fur under his thick hide armor. He moved like silk despite his horrific mission.

 _“Make peace with your soul every time you step out of the transport, sons,”_ his drill sergeant had counseled. _“Because every time you go, there’s a good chance you ain’t coming back.”_

The killer turned to Alexsandr, and suddenly the human recognized him. Blue fur went purple. His face thinned, eyes became less evil...

_“I’m just thinking about how easy I could crush your head.”_

Suddenly free of the tree and his injuries, Alexsandr pushed away from Garazeb Orrelios in panic—

—and smacked into the back wall of the overhang the two of them had found, the impact waking him from his nightmare.

Orrelios could have killed him in that moment. Injured and shocked, caught in reliving what was the undisputed _worst_ day of his life, Alexsandr had been completely helpless. Yet Orrelios had relented—seemed almost shocked by Alexsandr’s response as a spark of compassion briefly lit his yellow eyes. 

Alexsandr might have no idea why Gerrara’s Lasat let him live, but he had a good inkling of why Garazeb had.

_“It’s Zeb. My name… it’s Zeb.”_

He looked at his chrono. He’d been out of contact for a rotation and a half now. How much longer would it take for them to find him? If it was longer than another day, he would be declared missing in action, and he’d have to go through a standard re-intake and interrogation. Not world-shattering, but time-consuming and uncomfortable.

So he was more than grateful to finally hear the sound of engines in the atmosphere twenty minutes later. 

Except that they weren’t Imperial engines, or if they were it was from the very beginning of the Empire. They were rough and spotty—not at all the smooth roar of the _Ghost_. For all its age, the rebels’ craft was well-maintained.

He hauled himself to his feet, the task leagues harder than it had been with Orrelios’s help, and shuffled toward the edge of the overhang. One small grace of the ice: his broken leg was nearly too frozen to hurt at this point.

“Ho-hey!” called a feminine voice in the still cold. “Ho-hey! Anybody around, or am I talking to myself?”

The female spoke Basic, but of the laid-back, sloppy variety of one of the Inner Rim colonies. Alexsandr kept moving forward and found a beat up YT freighter landed in the exact spot the _Ghost_ had been hours before. A human woman was standing at the bottom of the cargo ramp.

“Beggars cannot be choosers,” Alexsandr murmured to himself. He moved farther toward the edge of the ice ledge and raised his voice as much as he could. “I’m here!” he called roughly. Breathing the frigid air had done little for his volume, but he managed.

“Skies, man, you’re frozen up there, aren’t ya?” the freighter’s crewman called, climbing the ice ramp as if to actually help Alexsandr descend. “What happened? Crash your…” The woman trailed off as she came close enough for a good look. “So you’re Empire, then?”

Alexsandr had dealt with this many times. They pretended high dudgeon, but truly, all these traders cared about was money. Unless he was unlucky enough to be dealing with someone wanted by the Empire. “If you can get me to the destroyer that is no doubt in orbit around the planet above us, the Empire will pay you handsomely.”

“There’s no destroyers, man,” she said, still considering him. 

He was sure she must be mistaken. 

“I was on a mission,” he explained, though he hardly knew why he bothered. “They should be searching for me around the field of debris.”

“Nope,” she told him bluntly. “Nobody here but me and you.” 

Alexsandr suddenly felt distinctly under-armed. He’d lost his pistol in the crash and the bo-rifle strapped to his leg was pointed the wrong way for him to use it as it was. 

He thought fast. “If you could extend me passage to Jatinwan, you’ll be paid when we get there.” It was close enough to get him back into the fold before his time was up, and he knew the lieutenant in charge there...

She seemed to consider it for far too long before she walked forward and offered him an arm to lean on. “I always like a few credits in my pocket. And you totally look like you could use to meet a medpanel.”

Alexsandr limped down the ice ramp with her help and entered the ship. “I don’t suppose you have one?”

“No way,” she replied predictably. “Just said you looked like you should meet one.”

It might have had no medpanel, but Alexsandr was glad the YT also had no ladders. 

“You gotta sit in the cockpit where I can keep an eye on you,” she told him as she led him into the cramped front of the ship and locked the blast door behind them. 

“Perhaps not the wisest choice to divulge that you are alone on your craft,” he warned her.

She had a pistol suddenly in his face and he stumbled backward and fell into the co-pilot’s chair.

“Don’t need anybody to protect me, man,” she told him, holstering the sidearm immediately. “Remember it, yeah?”

“I will,” he promised.

Alexsandr simply reveled in the warmth of the ship as the pilot eased them off-moon and into hyperspace. 

At length, she glanced over at him. “Name’s Rika.”

“Alexsandr,” he replied. No need to divulge his full name if it wasn’t necessary. Had he told Zeb his name?

“Shame to use a nice rifle like that for a splint and all.”

“It isn’t for trade,” he told her quellingly.

Rika shrugged. “Rock’s good, too. Shiny.”

For some reason, Alexsandr gripped the meteorite more tightly, the image of Zeb tossing it to him flashing through his mind: _“Here. Warm yourself up.”_

“Also not for trade.”

Rika snorted and turned back to her piloting. “Don’t look like you got much to trade, then, does it?” She shrugged. “I mean, you’re cute and all, but knocking boots don’t pay for fuel.”

Alexsandr grimaced at the very idea. “As I said, the Empire will—”

“—pay handsomely. Right.” She patted her sidearm. “They don’t, I get the rifle and the rock.”

“Fair enough,” Alexsandr murmured.

************

Zeb slept a full rotation through and woke feeling almost himself again.

Maybe Kallus wasn’t the ultimate evil. (Okay, Zeb’d met three inquisitors now, plus Darth kriffin' Vader. Kallus _definitely_ wasn’t the ultimate evil.) But he was still the enemy. And Zeb wasn’t naive enough to think the human had warm and fuzzy feelings about the rebellion all of a sudden, just because they'd helped each other out.

It had been a break in hostilities. Thrown together with your enemy to survive. Nothing more.

_“It’s Zeb. My name… it’s Zeb.”_

_A tiny smile. An opening of sorts. “Short for Garazeb. I know.”_

Nothing. More.

*********

Alexsandr made his deadline and Rika was paid—though from the look on her face, it wasn’t as handsome a sum as she’d been wanting. 

While Lieutenant Mador wasn’t _glad_ to see him, he was at least forthcoming with aid. Jatinwan’s tiny medical bay had neither the bacta nor the time to spare to address the damage to his leg properly. Once he had finally warmed up, the pain had been incredible, but after Onderon he’d spent a month in the bacta tank and three more learning to walk again, so this was hardly unbearable.

Painkillers on board and his bo-rifle replaced by a proper splint under clean clothes, Alexsandr finally limped aboard a shuttle bound for the fleet. It had taken two weeks, but he was finally going home. 

He found out that the _Relentless_ had looked for him. For exactly six standard hours: the regulation amount of time to search for a fallen officer. He supposed he couldn’t fault Konstantine—any more than he usually did, at any rate. Every fighter he’d been given for the operation had been destroyed and the moon on which he and Orrelios had landed had been far enough away to make the transponder difficult to pick up, no doubt.

It was completely understandable.

What wasn’t understandable, but should perhaps have been expected, was his reception upon reaching the _Relentless._

He’d handed off the bag he acquired on Jatinwan to a lieutenant for delivery to his quarters later. He’d never normally have trusted his bo-rifle to someone else, but right now he simply did not have the energy to carry it himself. 

Nor did he have the fortitude to face the medbay quite yet. Sleep. First sleep, then perhaps food, and then, he’d face whatever they could do to recover the use of that leg.

He supposed he could have commandeered a cart to deliver him, saved himself some work and pain, but for some reason, he wanted to arrive home on his own two feet. He’d call it showing no weakness to the enemy, but the _Relentless_ was hardly the enemy, was it?

He was surprised to see Konstantine approaching in the hall as he neared his quarters. Perhaps the admiral had been wanting to welcome him home.

“Admiral Konstantine,” he hailed him, trying for a bright tone despite his exhaustion.

Kostantine’s voice brought to mind the chill of that Geonosian moon. “Agent Kallus.” 

And the admiral moved on.

 _“Ah, Zeb! You made it!”_ Ezra Bridger’s voice rang painfully in his mind, the joy in it some sort of mad counterpoint to reality.

For two weeks, he’d been dreaming of home, and yet, now he looked at his clean ( _sterile_ ) cabin, he wondered for a moment why he’d cared. _Simple fatigue, Alexsandr,_ he counseled his mind. _You’ll feel more yourself tomorrow._

He limped forward, placing the rock on his shelf before dropping to a seat on his bunk….

At least the meteorite was still giving off heat.

***********

tbc…. 


	16. Now, the Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "Shroud of Darkness."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bear with me through Yoda's part. There's actually a couple of important things said there...

“Find Malachor.”

Eight-hundred-and-ninety years had he reached. Tiring it was, to cast about in the Force so far. Sat back he did, as the image of Ezra Bridger faded.

“Sending them to Malachor is a dangerous proposition.” One side of the discussion, had Obi-Wan heard. Questioning, he was. With good reason. Sat he beside Yoda, his ship parked close to Yoda’s home. On Tatooine could Obi-Wan not stay. Face-to-face, this discussion needed to be.

Yoda's mind stretched back, to the youngling who was not young. To the Temple of Lothal—center of nature’s Force, strong for its children. Fear, he felt, but boundless curiosity. Justice without vengeance. Compassion. Love. _Connection_ as seen he had not for many years. 

“To Malachor they will go,” Yoda said. “Seen it, we _both_ have.”

Nodded, Obi-Wan did. “Both visions do seem to point to the same conclusion. But are you certain this is the right path, Master?”

“Right path? Right?” Yoda giggled to himself. A youngling Obi-Wan still was, in this way. “Sure I am that many paths, the Force follows. Right and wrong, but two they are.”

“Master,” chided Obi-Wan. 

Frivolous that was. “For now, the right path it is. Always in motion is the future.”

“So you say.” Frivolous as well. “Often.”

Silence. Disquiet in Obi-Wan’s mind. Since the human a child was, had Yoda known him in the Force. Effortless was the connection between them.

“Master… Malachor is powerful with the Dark Side. It amplifies what it touches. He _will_ feel them there. Especially Ahsoka.” Worried, Obi-Wan was. And sad. “If all three of them were to meet him in battle, it’s possible…” Kill Vader, they may. The future unclear was. “Are you certain they are up to the task?”

“Which task, hmmm?” asked he. Not Vader alone, did he see in his vision. “Many tasks has Malachor. Always needing, is the Dark Side. Always needing.” 

Seen his own vision, Obi-Wan had. Else to Dagobah he would not have come. Maul and Ezra, entwined, they would be. Entwined how, Obi-Wan could see not. But great fear lay between the two. Great guilt and anger. Longing.

Images, he saw again. Voices, he heard. Plagued him, they did: 

**_The holocron of the Sith. The holocron of the Jedi. Together and apart._ **

_“To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy...”_

**_Bright flash of pain and cry of anger. Despair and failure._ **

_“Our long awaited meeting has come at last.”_

**_The meeting of the Dark and Light in need and want._ **

_“I swear, he’s on our side!”_

**_Others of Darkness. Sorrow, longing, and anger… Shock. The unwillingness to turn... Guilt beyond all._ **

_“Your passions give you strength. You must break your chains.”_

**_A Guardian of the Temple, rising from pain. Ending and beginning._ **

_“Ezra, you were given your gift for one reason. To use it.”_

“Your gift, yes,” to himself he murmured. “But which gift, hmmm?”

Many gifts had Ezra Bridger. Many futures could Yoda see. Many futures the Temple offered.

“I believe Ahsoka can take care of herself, to a point. But Ezra knows little in the grand scheme of things. Caleb himself was only half-trained before Depa was killed. If Vader destroys them all…” Hidden from Obi-Wan, Vader was. Guilt, a powerful wall could it build.

“Then gone they will be.” Simple it was. Yet simple it was not.

“Even if they should elude Vader, if Maul turns Ezra, they are still lost.” Frustration did Obi-Wan feel. An enemy long in the making and dangerous, Maul was. “Ezra Bridger’s mind is untrained, undisciplined. He has not learned to protect himself. He is... too open, Master.”

_“There is no way a Jedi can unlock that holocron.”_

_“How did_ you _accomplish this?”_

“ _Too_ open?” laughed he. Such a thing, was there? “And never the Dark Side, _you_ have touched?”

“There is touching the Dark Side, and there is being unable to stop it from consuming you.” Such fear. Such sadness. Mourned still, did Obi-Wan. 

“A Padawan lost, a lifelong pain, it is,” Yoda counseled. His own pain did he keep. “But color your future, it must not.”

“It isn’t _my_ future I’m worried about.”

_“You will die braver than most.”_

“Strong is Ezra Bridger,” Yoda knew. “Compassion and trust abounding, yet fear and longing also. Compassion and attachment and connection… Different he is. Different Caleb is. Ahsoka. Maul.” Changed had the world—the Force itself, perhaps—when gone the Jedi Order was. “Unclear the parts each will play, Obi-Wan,” counseled he. “No longer simple is the path.”

Silent, Obi-Wan was. Looked he to the sky, as if there, the future lay.

“There is nothing to do but wait, then,” said he. “Wait for them to reach Malachor.”

The end of his vision, Yoda saw again: Vader before a padawan who a padawan no longer was. As Yoda had—as might Obi-Wan—meet his past, Vader would. His future, clouded by the Dark Side.

“Yes,” agreed he. “Reach Malachor they must. All of them.”

And then, now, the future would be.

*********

“I hear if you fail in the Room of Learning, they send you to Malachor!”

Tai’s braids swung about her head as she shared her knowledge. When she was older, she said she’d get _nibada_ like all the women on her planet; golden cylinders to hold her hair. Caleb didn’t really see the point. Hair was hair. What did it matter what you did with it? Girls, though. They did _a lot_ with it. He’d be like Master Kenobi and just let it hang there.

“Malachor is a myth,” Sammo piped up. At six, the Twi’lek was a little older, a little bigger, but Caleb knew he’d grow into his own human body and be bigger and stronger, too. Someday.

“I don’t think it is,” Caleb argued. “If it was a myth, they wouldn’t warn the initiates about it.”

“How do _you_ know _what_ they warn the initiates about?” Tai asked. She was so _bossy!_

Caleb smirked. “Because they like me,” he said. “They talk to me.”

“You just sneak in and listen when they’re talking to each other.”

Caleb ducked his head. Being small had to be good for something, right? Though there were air vents even he didn’t go near. Like the ones in the upper levels, near the masters’ quarters.

“Anyway,” he continued. “I heard them saying that Master Kenobi told them there were forbidden worlds—places no Jedi could go because the Dark Side was _so strong_ there. And one of them was Malachor.”

“I bet Master Yoda could go there,” Tai argued.

That wasn’t even a question, in Caleb’s mind. “Master Yoda could go _anywhere_ ,” he agreed.

“Kanan?” 

Kanan shook himself from his thoughts and looked up at Ahsoka, standing over him. He turned the chair, seeing Ezra fidgeting in a seat behind her.

“Any idea where Malachor actually is?” he asked her, trying to keep things light.

Ahsoka smirked. “I was hoping maybe Master Yoda had told Ezra how to get there.” 

“All he said was ‘Find Malachor.’” Ezra waved one hand in a remarkably Yoda way, and Kanan almost chuckled. 

“Master Billaba’s holocron has all the Jedi star charts,” he offered.

“Mine does as well,” she told him. “Unfortunately the ones detailing the forbidden planets are only accessible by Knights and Masters of the Order.”

_“By the right of the Council. By the will of the Force. Kanan Jarrus, rise.”_

Kanan couldn’t keep a sudden wry grin from his face. “Looks like that’s not a barrier anymore.”

Ahsoka’s eyes widened. “It sounds like we have some things to discuss.”

“Wait,” Ezra said, looking at Kanan in surprise. “Are you a… a knight now?”

Kanan thought of his battle with the temple guards: the Sith saber in his own hand, the Pau’an who knighted him… Images of Darkness in the Hall of Light.

“Yeah,” he admitted, his grin falling away. 

Ezra picked up his mood immediately and his voice dropped in concern. “What happened?”

“Like Ahsoka said, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Chopper announced that they could talk later. The ship was about to drop out of hyperspace and he wanted to plug into his own charging station, thank you. 

The droid continued to grumble about how the organics were always dragging him all over the galaxy, and Kanan turned his chair around to pilot the ship as they dropped into normal space in front of the command ship.

“ _Phoenix Home_ ,” he called over the line. “This is _Phantom_.” This was one of those protocol things he still didn’t like, but had gotten used to. What he wanted to do was fly straight to the _Ghost_ and dock, but he had to check in with command first. He gave them his security code and waited.

“Welcome home, _Phantom._ ” Commander Sato answered himself, and Kanan looked up at Ahsoka in surprise. “Commander Tano is needed on the command ship.”

Kanan reached out in the Force and looked out in the space around them, feeling Hera’s determined presence and seeing the _Ghost_ , untethered and flying under her own power. “Acknowledged, Command.” He angled the little shuttle toward the corvette that served as Phoenix Cell’s command ship. “I’ll drop you off first,” he told her. “We can talk later.”

Ahsoka nodded. “We should leave soon.” 

“Before the inquisitors come after us again,” Ezra muttered. For all the fighting he’d done, every battle survived, the inquisitors were a wraith Ezra couldn’t shake from his mind. 

“The Jedi Temple at Lothal has fallen,” Ahsoka reminded them, and the thought shot a pang of regret through Kanan. “It’s likely they’ll be too busy there to chase you for a while.” Her eyes darkened. “I expect their master will want to investigate the area. See what he can pillage.” She stumbled over the words “their master”, but Kanan wasn’t sure she noticed it herself. He wondered what it meant and whether he should worry about it.

Because he had so little to worry about himself. 

“What I don’t understand is why we’d only seen the two of them.”

“You _want_ to see more?” she asked jokingly.

Kanan grinned briefly in response. “The female told Ezra that there were _many_ inquisitors looking for us. Why are we always seeing just these two?”

“It’s possible she was simply trying to scare him,” Ahsoka offered reasonably. 

“Well, it worked,” Ezra replied quietly.

“Or it’s possible the 'many' are busy hunting others."

There was a pleasant thought. 

“Regardless, I believe our best course of action is to follow orders and find Malachor.” She sighed, nervous. “Though I can’t understand why Yoda would send us there to begin with.”

Kanan spun back around in his chair as Chopper took over the docking. “Clearly there’s something there he wants us to find.”

Ahsoka nodded. “The question is, will it help?”

To that, there would be no answer until they got there.

*********

Ezra stood just behind the pilot’s chair and watched the fleet as Kanan flew them home. Ahsoka had promised to come to the _Ghost_ as soon as she was done with Commander Sato. 

“I’m sorry, Ezra.”

Kanan’s quiet apology was… confusing.

“What do you have to be sorry for?” He tried to suppress it, but even after two years with his crew, Ezra had this irrational fear that he’d eventually screw up. That Kanan was apologizing as a precursor to something worse.

“You were right,” Kanan continued. “You don’t need protecting.” He looked up and met Ezra’s eyes. “I guess sometimes I forget that you’re older now than I was when I went to war.” He smirked in that way that Ezra hated. The one that said _I’m not good enough_. “And that you’re a better fighter.”

“Only because _you_ taught me,” he shot back.

Kanan turned his chair around as they approached the _Ghost_ and Chopper took over docking. “I’m going to have to teach you a lot more if we’re going to Malachor.” He tilted his head. “Maybe I can get Ahsoka to do some sparring with you.”

That actually sounded like fun. “Do I get to use two sabers?” he asked craftily.

For some reason, that disturbed Kanan, and Ezra had to ask again. “What happened in the Temple? You… I mean, clearly you’re a Jedi Knight and everything now.” That got him a smile, at least. “But something else…?”

Kanan studied the deck plates. “I haven’t quite figured it out,” he said quietly. And then he looked up with an openness on his face that calmed Ezra's mind. “I’ll let you know when I do.”

The _Phantom_ docked, and Ezra started wondering how they were even going to explain all of this to the rest of the crew.

“Ezra?” Kanan called.

Ezra turned back before he opened the door between the _Phantom_ and the _Ghost._ “Yeah?”

“Let’s not tell the rest of them about Malachor just yet.”

Okay, again, confusing.

“What’s wrong with telling them? I mean, we finally have something to go on, right? Something that’ll make us all safer? Maybe get rid of the inquisitors for good?” Why not share the good news?

Kanan put a hand on his shoulder. Ezra was sure it was meant to be reassuring, but it only highlighted Kanan’s unease in the Force between them. “We’re not even sure where we’re going yet, Ezra,” he reminded him. “And telling them we’re going to another planet that’s been forbidden to the Jedi for as long as there’ve _been_ Jedi isn’t really going to make anyone feel safer, is it?”

Okay, that at least made sense. Surely Mustafar had been one forbidden planet too many.

“We’ll tell them when it’s time,” Kanan counseled. “For now, we just have information we’re not sure what to do with.”

Ezra nodded. He’d go along with that. But somehow, he just knew that _not_ telling Hera about this was going to cause more problems than telling her would. 

**********

“I don’t think the mission will take more than a few weeks,” Ahsoka tried to assure Kanan and Ezra, though she was sure her own frustration bled through. She had gone straight from the briefing to her starship and was readying for the jump to Tatoonie. “Once I return, we should get to Malachor immediately.”

Kanan’s holographic image nodded. Ezra’s was tense and barely still. “Sounds like a plan,” Kanan told her.

“Be safe,” Ezra offered.

Ahsoka gave them both a smile. “You too. I’ll return soon.”

She watched their images fade. “But not soon enough.”

This was the absolute worst time to send her out, and she would have cursed Commander Sato, but for the fact that she was one of the few operatives they had who could contact the Hutt without worrying about her safety. He’d really had little choice in the matter. _Simply bad timing. And a bad, bad place to go._

As it was, she and Kanan didn’t even have time to talk about whatever had been bothering him. Clearly the Temple itself had knighted him—or perhaps Yoda, she thought, remembering the gentle wave the old master had given her as they escaped, the warmth that had flooded her in seeing him again—but something else had happened. Something that had shaken him.

He wasn’t the only one.

“Let’s get going, Ar-nine,” she told her astromech, letting it take them into hyperspace.

 _“You abandoned me. You_ failed _me!”_

“Anakin,” she whispered as the blue of hyperspace enveloped her ship. 

_“Do you know what I have become?”_

She wished she didn’t. She’d denied it for as long as she could—tried to pretend that it was all in her mind. 

_“Do you know what I have become?”_

“Yes, Master,” she murmured, a tear escaping her control. “I’m sorry.”

She may have failed him before, but if she could find him, she wouldn’t fail him again.

***********

tbc...


	17. The Waiting Part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place before, during, and after "The Forgotten Droid."

Ahsoka landed outside of Jabba’s Keep and climbed stiffly out of her ship, stretching hard after the long trip. The heat wrapped around her instantly and she sighed. She’d never liked Tatooine—and not just because she’d nearly been killed the first time she visited. 

She remembered the mission that had led to her being one of the few rebel leaders who could negotiate with the Hutts. It had been her first real mission with just her and Anakin. He _hated_ Tatooine. Hated it in a very unJedi way. 

Though truly, the planet did turn out to have little to recommend it.

As she announced herself and was shown to the waiting hall of Jabba’s palace, Ahsoka tried not to feel the ghost of her master, but… It was impossible. There was a pressure in her mind, as if his echo remained here, and she firmed her own shields instinctively, though there was nothing to guard against. It was somehow cruel, given what she thought she now knew, to be asked to come to the place that signified the true cementing of their bond as Master and Padawan. 

She still couldn’t quite believe what had happened.

 _“So Count Dooku was once a Jedi?”_ Ahsoka had always asked too many questions when she was young. She had that in common with a certain youngling she’d known. _“How could he turn?”_

Anakin had been quiet in his answer, circumspect. _“The Dark Side can be attractive,”_ he told her. _“It can make you think you’ll get everything you want if you just give in.”_

 _“But you can’t really,”_ she’d asked, young enough to be that little bit unsure of the answer. _“Right?”_

 _“The Dark Side brings nothing but pain and horror,”_ he’d told her, his voice rough and thick, as if he’d tasted it before.

For once, she hadn’t asked any more questions.

She’d seen Anakin have brushes with the Dark Side—she’d had a brush or two herself, but… Why hadn’t he remembered what he’d told her? she wondered, as she waited in the sere heat of midday. What could have happened to turn _him_?

And was there any way in the galaxy to turn him _back_?

Jabba’s latest protocol droid approached her finally, its metal feet clanking in the ever-present sand. “Jabba will see you now, Lady Tano.” 

Ahsoka took a deep breath and cleared her mind. Going over the same thoughts time and again wouldn’t bring her an answer. And the mission she was on was important. If the local Rebel cell couldn’t get safe passage through this area of space they’d be cut off from the greater fleet.

Hopefully Jabba would still be willing to do a deal with the “Baby Jedi” who’d saved his son’s life…

************

Obi-Wan reentered normal space above Tatooine and found he had actually missed it. Hot, dry, and merciless it might be, but it was also calm, quiet, and very far away from the planet that currently occupied most of his thoughts.

Malachor.

If Yoda’s vision was correct, Vader stood to gain the power of the Temple there. With it, the Emperor could destroy them all, as the Sith had destroyed all those who fought on that planet so many centuries ago. 

And Ahsoka would be there. Ahsoka and Caleb Dume and Caleb’s puzzling young apprentice, Ezra Bridger. 

Obi-Wan had been surprised, a year ago, when the Temple at Lothal had activated and Yoda had informed him of Caleb’s survival. He didn’t know how many Jedi had been saved—even briefly—by Caleb’s innocent query about whether the beacon home could become a warning beacon, but Obi-Wan had been thinking of Depa’s young Padawan the day he’d sent out his call to stay away.

After the Purge, after the pain of losing so many had finally calmed and left them enough space and peace to search, both he and Yoda had done just that, reaching out through the Force to ascertain who had survived and who had not. It had been mind-bending work, and painful. Especially when they found the ones who had survived only to be turned.

And when they realized those who had turned had found others to hunt.

Never, among the hunting or the hunted, had Obi-Wan found “the apprentice with all the questions,” as Mace Windu had called him. The records seemed to confirm that he had survived the attack on Kaller, but Caleb was simply gone, his signature in the Force nothing but a memory.

 _Few memories die,_ Obi-Wan reminded himself wryly, the sadness that was always with him pulling at him. And the man who now called himself Kanan Jarrus was one of those that hadn’t.

Caleb’s Padawan was a puzzle. Born with the Empire, as Anakin’s children were, Ezra Bridger had been blessed to live in a backwater, far from any who might recognize him for what he was. That the backwater held one of the truly ancient Jedi Temples, so ancient that the Emperor might not even know of it, might have been what drew Caleb Dume to the planet in the first place.

Or perhaps the Force simply put its children where it needed them to be.

Called by the Temple itself, Yoda had assessed this new Padawan, chosen after the fall, and had spoken of Ezra’s power to connect—to people, animals… He was truly remarkable, both for his abilities and for the fact that he had been found and trained by one of the survivors. And so Obi-Wan took an interest. He found out what he could through the many channels he had, both in the world and in the Force. 

Given his interest, the vision that had woken him two weeks ago should not have surprised him. It hadn’t been as broad as Yoda’s sweeping vision. His own views into the future had always been much more personal in nature. 

The world where it played out was one soaked in tragedy. In the blood of thousands. He hadn’t recognized it at first, but he realized now that it was Malachor. 

_“All Sith and their masters are my enemy.”_ Maul. A voice Obi-Wan hadn’t heard in many, many years. He'd been flippant with Ahsoka as she headed to find the Dathomirian on Mandalore, what seemed like ages ago, but truly, it was difficult to make sure Maul was dead. Obi Wan expected that, regardless of what else occurred there, Maul would escape Malachor to live another day. 

He wasn't sure he could say the same of the boy who shared the spotlight in his vision. Ezra Bridger’s voice was the sound of Rebellion from Lothal nearly a year ago, and it was still edged in pain and sadness. And goaded into bitterness. _“The Empire, it took away my home, and my mother, and my father!”_

_“And you want revenge!”_

_“I want_ **_justice_** _.”_

 _“I have discovered the key.”_ As always, Maul's voice was wheedling and seductive.

A Sith holocron floated in the vision.

 _“How do you open this?”_ Ezra had inherited his master's curiosity.

_“One must be a Sith. Or think like one…. Only someone with the courage to risk oblivion is worthy to claim it…. Sith holocrons are keys that can open many doors.”_

The vision dissolved into battles and pain and anguish and yet… Above it all… Connection. Forged by guilt and anger and a deep need.

_“You were wise to trust me.”_

It was never wise to trust Maul, but if the boy wasn’t stopped, Ezra would do so. Young in the Force and both blessed and cursed with the power of connection, the teen had the ability to see too many sides to every conflict. If he had been trained from childhood, in peacetime, he could have been a great facilitator, making use of his abilities to help opposing sides seek common ground.

But inexperienced and naive, shaped by street corners instead of temple walls, he was simply too open. Too easy to influence. Like so many of the survivors caught in the death of the Order, he could be used. Manipulated. Turned.

Like a certain other force-wielder Obi-Wan knew.

“Vader have I seen,” Yoda had told him, when he contacted the old master about his vision. “The weapon of Malachor he would seek to harness. Skywalker’s Padawan would bar his way. She and the others.”

The others, of course, were Caleb and Ezra. 

He’d thought it strange, in that moment, that he hadn’t seen Vader in his own vision. But Anakin had severed their link to each other long ago, his hate and anger searing it closed with terrifying permanence. Obi-Wan could not sense him as he had—perhaps would never sense him properly again.

“Against the Dark Side, will they battle. If these three Vader meets...?”

Yoda was asking for a miracle, though Obi-Wan had done the same when they met on Dagobah. It was a miracle Obi-Wan desperately wished could happen. But he feared that, by sending those three to Malachor, Yoda might well be sending them to their deaths at Vader’s hand, not the other way around. 

There was little choice though. Vader had to be stopped if possible, the great weapon destroyed.

Obi-Wan entered the atmosphere and reached out through the Force as he always did on those rare occasions when he left Tatooine. He could feel Anakin’s son, a bright, rough patch in the Force, and...

“Ahsoka.”

She was leagues away, but Ahsoka was here. On Tatooine.

He forced himself to land in Mos Eisley, though the urge to go to her was strong. Why was she _here_? He was aware of her work with Bail Organa and his friends, but… Why Tatooine of all places?

_“I don’t think I’d want to go back, Master Kenobi. Tatooine was a little hot for my tastes.”_

She’d done well on that mission—Obi-Wan had thought he’d made such a good choice, pairing the precocious child with his equally precocious friend.

_“Skywalker’s Padawan would bar his way.”_

Would she? Even if she knew who Vader had once been? 

It had always been one of the few comforts in all of this, that at least Ahsoka wouldn’t know what had become of Anakin. Obi-Wan had been informed of the lightsabers left on Commander Rex’s grave, but the very idea that Ahsoka had been killed had never occurred to him. He hadn’t felt her in the Force, but he hadn’t felt the lack of her, either. She’d been on Mandalore when Order 66 was given, but she was no Jedi. 

When Yoda had found her in the Force, years later and very different, Obi-Wan hadn’t been surprised enough to even be relieved by her survival. It was simply a fact he’d known in his heart.

Ahsoka had been gifted from the first. Moreso than any of the other Padawans of her age. And her connection to the Force had been changed, even augmented, by the Daughter in subtle ways, ways even Yoda had been unable to understand.

Could she do what Obi-Wan himself could not? Could she destroy Vader? A thought pushed weakly through his defenses. _Could she turn him back?_

He took a deep breath and climbed out of the starfighter, turned it over to the man from whom he’d rented it, and headed out into the evening. Into the sands.

He did not like to wait, but Crazy Old Ben Kenobi of the Dune Sea would do just that. Gone were the days when Obi-Wan ran into danger, when he tortured himself with things he could not change and futures he could not see. 

“Don't center on your anxieties, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon had said, a thousand times in a dozen different ways. “Keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs.” 

He reached out again into the Force, felt the star of Luke Skywalker’s signature shining safely in the coming night. Luke, who was so strong with the Force that he shone like a beacon. Luke, who was Ezra's age—almost exactly. Crazy Old Ben wouldn't think about what Luke could have done had a Jedi come forward to teach him... With an ache in his soul, Obi-Wan closed himself off from Ahsoka, in case she should feel him and come looking.

Here and now, Ahsoka Tano clearly had a mission. Here and now, Obi-Wan had his own. What had been set in motion would have to play out. Changing it now could spell disaster. 

He only hoped that disaster wouldn’t come to them all anyway.

**********

Docking Bay 4 of the carrier was only half full most of the time. It was where they did the extensive repairs on starfighters that were on their last legs. Luckily, the fleet only had a few of those right now, so it was basically a huge lightsaber playground.

Ezra was loving it.

Kanan lunged, moving in close to run him up against a stack of crates and limit his movements. It was something the big inquisitor did _a lot_ , using his bulk and strength to intimidate. Ezra looked at the catwalk above them and launched himself straight up, using a little extra Force push to top the railing and land neatly on the deck plates.

“Distance only gets you somewhere if you have a way to escape!” Kanan called to him, throwing his lightsaber and then, amazingly, using the Force to stop it cold before it cut through the strut above the catwalk. “And height is only good if it’s fully stable or if you can relocate quickly,” he said, deactivating the saber and pulling it back to himself. 

Ezra just stared at him for a moment, wondering how he could still have such control after all these hours training. “This is ridiculous. I’m never gonna be as good as you and Ahsoka.”

Kanan nodded as Ezra jumped back down to him. “You’re half right there. It’s possible Ahsoka might be the best saber fighter in the galaxy at the moment.” His eyes dimmed a little. “At least on our side.”

Yeah. Which was, of course, why they were practicing. All the time, lately. He remembered Yoda’s warnings about fighting, but he was almost positive they wouldn’t have a choice once they got where they were going. 

Kanan took a deep breath and let it out slowly, straightening. “One more round.”

“What do you mean one more round?” Ezra asked. “How is that round over? Nobody won.”

“It _still_ isn’t about winning, Ezra.”

But it was. Kanan kept saying that, but it _was_ about winning. Winning meant a dead inquisitor, right? That was the definition of winning in this case. 

He wasn’t going to convince Kanan, though, so he reset his stance and grinned invitingly. 

“All right. One more round.”

Kanan pushed as hard as he could, knowing, after two weeks of this kind of training, that Ezra would rise to the challenge. He’d been watching as—literally daily—Ezra improved. Kanan was improving, too, which was good. The saber had always been one of his strong suits, but he _really_ wanted their next meeting with the inquisitors to be their last, so they needed every bit of advantage he could train into both of them.

And the Sister and Brother aside, he didn’t know what they would face on Malachor. Would it be something that could give them the knowledge to defeat the Sith? A weapon? The entire Inquisitorius right there in front of them for them to just… deal with? He had absolutely no idea. But he was doing everything possible to make sure they were as ready as they could be.

_“Try to fight, and you will fail.”_

He put the Temple Guard’s words out of his mind. For the thousandth time. Instead, he blocked Ezra’s advance—which was perfect offensive Form Four (he’d have to congratulate him later)—and hopped up onto a stack of crates about two meters tall.

“I thought high ground was only useful if it was stable!” Ezra called, taunting him. Half a second before it happened, he felt Ezra’s expected intention to use the Force to topple the crates. Kanan leapt into the air, flipping hard to land behind his Padawan, bringing his lightsaber up for a killing stroke and stopping dead three inches from Ezra’s neck. 

“Or if you can relocate quickly,” he corrected his student.

Ezra slumped as Kanan removed his saber. With a steady hand, the kid easily restacked the boxes. Months of the two of them shoving each other out of the way of inquisitors had certainly honed the kid’s Force lifting abilities.

“You did good.” Kanan made sure to say it aloud, letting his approval pass between them in the Force as well. “We’ll get back to it tomorrow.” 

“Does that mean I finally get to go eat?” Ezra asked. He wasn’t whining. Just hungry, like any normal kid would be after three hours of sparring. 

“Sure,” Kanan said, dismissing him formally by saluting him with his saber. 

Ezra gave a grin as he did the same, then extinguished his weapon and ran off toward the _Ghost,_ parked in Docking Bay 3.

Strangely enough, Ezra hadn’t uttered a single real complaint since they returned from Lothal. Kanan was training him twice as long and twice as hard, and the teen was just… endlessly ready to take it all on.

It was like watching himself prepare for his first battle assignment with Master Billaba, and it was terrifying. Ezra was so focused on fighting this war. Just like he’d been.

Kanan took a centering breath and looked at the bay around him, reviewing their work since Ahsoka had taken off for wherever she’d gone to. Depa Billaba had been a natural teacher. Thorough. Caleb Dume had been a virtual sponge and questioned enough to wring every ounce of information from her. Their sparring had been epic, according to their soldiers, and Kanan had felt her techniques come back to him more and more over the last year and a half. Passing them on was easy, though he wasn’t the effortless teacher she was.

And there were things she’d just never had a chance to teach him, things he’d had to learn himself. Once Caleb was dead and Kanan had risen from his ashes, he’d focused more on the mental and internal aspects of the Force, when he allowed the Force to touch him at all. Making people forget they’d ever seen him, using the energy around him to make his body go beyond a human’s capabilities when he needed it to… He’d instinctively honed the techniques you could hide—and the ones that could hide _you_.

There wasn’t time to teach Ezra all of it now, so he focused on what they’d need in the short term. He was teaching Ezra shielding—far more robust than Ezra had had the first time he’d met the Seventh Sister—and had even tried to teach him the technique of being Here and There. That wasn’t going so well, but with the past Ezra had lived, Kanan figured There wasn’t all that attractive to him. The kid had forgotten things as a defense mechanism, and they didn’t have time to break through that blockage. 

They’d discussed it though, and Kanan could almost thank Kallus and Tarkin and the Grand Inquisitor himself for teaching him how remembering the past could help you to endure the present.

 _“Is this the limit of your knowledge?”_ the temple guard whispered in his mind.

It was. It was literally the limit of his knowledge. Maybe even then some. And he still feared it wouldn’t be enough. He was also sobered to realize that, to some extent, he was trying to pass on everything he’d ever learned. As quickly and completely as possible.

Just in case.

“Hey, Kanan!” Ezra called. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” he answered, making his way toward the corridor that led to the next bay. “I’m coming.”

There was nothing to do but to prepare, right?

He wondered where Ahsoka was and how she was faring. All he really wanted was to be on their way to Malachor so they could find out what they were supposed to be doing. So that, however it ended, the waiting part could just be _over_.

*********

Hera stretched her back carefully as she, Rex, Ketsu, and Zeb stood between the _Ghost_ and the _Shadow Caster_ , pouring over the maps Chopper projected into the air between them. There _had_ to be a planet somewhere where they could set up base. The carrier was protecting their fighters, for now, but the pressure on the fleet to stay constantly spaceborne was going to prove to be too much at some point. Eventually they wouldn’t be able to beg, borrow, or steal enough fuel to keep everything in the stars.

“What about Darnon?” Ketsu offered. Hera hadn’t been surprised in the least when the young woman had contacted the fleet and requested a meet. She’d seen the glow of a fighter in Ketsu’s eyes at their first meeting. And the Black Sun wasn’t what Ketsu wanted to be fighting for. Her friendship with Sabine had been repairing quickly, and Hera was glad to see her Mandalorian opening up to at least a sliver of her past.

“Darnon is abandoned,” Rex allowed, “but the atmosphere is corrosive over the long term. With the age of some of our ships, we could stay one cycle, maybe two, before things started breaking down.”

“It’s going to take a lot more than a cycle to beat the Empire,” Hera murmured.

She looked over at the _Ghost_ as Ezra sprinted up the cargo ramp. Looking for food, no doubt. He and Kanan had stepped up their training, and while Ezra still wasn’t putting on any weight—it seemed like that was going to continue to be a constant problem—his muscles were filling out a little. And if he wasn’t working, training, or at target practice with Rex, he was eating.

Kanan followed Ezra at a more moderate pace, and Hera was only a little surprised to see him head into the _Ghost_ , too. To meditate, no doubt. Ezra ate, he meditated…

And neither of them explained what they were clearly waiting for. A shoe of galactic proportions was going to drop at some point soon.

“Hera?”

She shook herself, flashing her gaze back to Rex. “Sorry?”

Rex smiled at her in understanding, then looked beyond to where Kanan was entering the ship. "You can't change the Jedi," he murmured to her. 

Hera shook her head. Wasn't that the truth!

“Didn’t we get word from one of the outlying cells about a system called Yost?” he said again, getting them back on track.

Hera got her head back into the fight. “Yost?” she mused. “Not a cell—one of the freighters, I think,” she corrected, picking up her datapad from the crate where she’d left it. She slid through her notes and information. Maybe this one would _finally_ be the one.

“Here we go…”

**********

The temple guard’s pike gave off no heat, but its kyber crystal sang in the air as it hovered over him; one shoulder, two, his head… A benediction.

_“Kanan Jarrus, you may rise.”_

_“What does this mean?”_

_“It means you are now what I once was. A knight of the Jedi Order.”_

Kanan stayed in the quiet of his meditation, though the image of the Grand Inquisitor—the Temple Guard—urged him to shy away. But he’d released the pain of his imprisonment, his torture at the Inquisitor’s hand. It couldn’t touch him... And even if that wasn't quite true, he strove to understand now, not to feel.

It had been taught to him from infancy, almost. The temple guards were different. Special. Sacred. They dedicated themselves to the Light, formed no attachments and took no Padawans. They cleansed themselves of emotion and devoted themselves entirely to the safety of the Jedi.

 _“You couldn’t save your master then, and you can’t save your followers now.”_ The Grand Inquisitor’s words aboard the _Sovereign_ rang in his mind. So like the words of the temple guard: _“Even now, the servants of the Dark Side come for your apprentice. You cannot fight forever.”_

And wasn’t that the lesson? Wasn’t that the… the takeaway? ...from his final trial? He couldn’t save Ezra from anything. He wasn’t _supposed to._ He was supposed to train him, teach him the Light side from the Dark. No man makes another’s decisions.

But if a temple guard could be turned, how could he—how could Ezra—resist? Malachor was fabled to be the place where a thousand Jedi died in an instant. How could they deny the evil of such a place? 

His comm’s beep broke through his thoughts and he welcomed the interruption.

“Everybody meet up outside,” Hera called on a crew-wide comm. “Now, please.” 

Kanan fancied he heard a bite to her words. The increase in Ezra’s training hadn’t gone unnoticed, after all. She knew something was up. He just… couldn’t talk to her about it yet. Not yet. After Ahsoka returned. After they had a game plan. _Then_ he’d sit down with her and explain it all.

When he was ready.

He sighed and stood fluidly. His muscles had embraced the more grueling schedule, as if his body knew that it would soon be asked to fight a far more crucial battle than any he had fought before. 

He ran into Ezra in the hallway, the kid showing a similar increase in grace these days. He wasn’t exactly filling out—no meat on his bones for that—but he was definitely stronger, his clothing pulling along the shoulders as those muscles grew bulkier.

“What’s the meeting about?” Ezra asked.

Kanan had a good idea. He’d seen Hera talking with Ketsu and Rex and Zeb in the hangar, but his thoughts after their sparring wouldn’t have helped him join the conversation. Going off on a mission for the Jedi Order was just as bad as establishing a wartime base. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted part of either endeavor, but he really didn’t have a choice, now did he?

“I’m hoping it means Ketsu and Hera have finally found a potential base,” he replied, keeping his thoughts and emotions to himself. 

Ezra snorted. “As long as they don’t ask the two of us to check it out.”

************

The Tatooine rebel cell had six ships: two ancient A-wings, a patched-together freighter that defied classification, and two small cruisers. She’d actually seen smaller cells. And those cells had done some pretty impressive damage.

Ahsoka’s own ship hung in space nearby, shepherding them on their first run. Jabba had been a little hard to convince, but she’d eventually just played to his love of profit. The rebels could, maybe, drop the occasional smuggling run for him. No one would suspect that old freighter of carrying anything of value, after all. It was what made it such a great rebel vessel.

Suspected or not, the freighter was currently carrying something of overwhelming value: a load of refugees from the Empire’s crackdown on Worfornn.

“Thank you, Fulcrum, we couldn’t have gotten our cargo through without you,” Nil Brie called to her as the freighter and A-wings headed into the atmosphere of one of Thulia’s moons. 

It was also carrying the supplies to set up those refugees in their new home, and the market price of those supplies would have made the small group a target, if it weren’t for Jabba’s protection.

“You’re welcome,” she told him, smiling to herself. She actually missed missions like this, where she was helping for the sake of helping.

But she had other obligations now. 

“I’ll be on my way,” she told him. “You know how to contact me if you need further help.”

 _For as long as I can be contacted,_ she thought, surprised at her own fatalism. 

She set course and jumped into hyperspace without another word. She’d have to stop to refuel long before she got back to the fleet, but she needed to be away from Tatooine. It had dug up too many memories. So many, in fact, that she’d even fancied she’d felt not only Anakin, but Obi-Wan in the warm heat of the place. Obi-Wan, who was gone, like all the other Jedi.

She wondered, again, if Obi-Wan could have stopped him turning. She wondered when it had happened. Had the Purge itself driven Anakin to it? Obi-Wan’s death, maybe? She could imagine that, having seen him deal with his master's "death" before. Anakin’s devotion to his friends—his attachment, no matter what the Order said—was deep and fierce...

“I’m glad you don’t have to know,” she whispered into the Force. Obi-Wan had been a brother to Anakin. For him to have to see him as… as Ahsoka saw him now...?

And still, she wished he was here. She wished Anakin had…

She wished a lot of things.

But wishes had gotten her nowhere in this life, so she set her mind to her task. To Malachor. What she and Kanan and Ezra would find there, she had no idea, but if it could stop Palpatine’s plans, stop the Inquisitors. if it could… If it could somehow stop what Anakin had become?

She would do what she had to.

************

Alexsandr looked out at the empty space beyond the third moon of Yost’s second gas giant. Konstantine and the _Relentless_ were set to engage the Phoenix Cell, hoping to drive them toward a sanctuary that was nothing more than a trap. An alert had come out of Horizon Base just an hour ago that a fuel shipment had been stolen, the rebels escaping in a VCX. 

Konstantine would no doubt find the rebels soon. The trap would be sprung.

The intelligence corps had sown the seeds months ago, through a spy he himself had recruited—a freighter pilot who had been seen in the company of Hera Syndulla and had had rebel leanings until Alexsandr had used his… persuasion… to convince him of the Empire’s right. 

The Yost system, so the man was to tell the rebels, was uninhabited, safe, free of the Empire. There were other “safe” systems, staked out as this one was and planted in the rebel’s collective database through similar means, but Alexsandr just… _felt_ that they would choose this one. With its proximity to Lothal and their seeming affinity for that planet, Yost was the perfect place for the rebels to hide.

 _A perfect place for the rebels to die,_ he thought, annoyed by the pang that went through him at that.

In truth, few things _didn’t_ annoy Alexsandr Kallus these days. Since Geonosis. His crew, his superiors, his adversaries, that damned Lasat…

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and returned to watching the stars. His world had been ordered. Safe. He hadn’t thought to question why things were done. Just follow the Empire's commands and allow the precision around you to tame the galaxy. Rebellion was an enemy to safety, after all. 

Wasn’t it?

“Agent Kallus,” his lieutenant announced. “We’re receiving a transmission.”

“The rebels have entered hyperspace,” Konstantine announced, his image appearing before Alexsandr. “If they’ve taken this particular bait, they should be arriving in the Yost system in three hours.”

“Well done, Admiral,” Alexsandr replied, gritting his teeth around the words. “We will let you know when they arrive, so you may join us.”

He disconnected the transmission and stared at those stars again. Sandwiching the rebels between two fronts. It would be a slaughter.

_“Lasan? It wasn’t supposed to be a massacre.”_

Damn.

“Alert me as soon as the rebels have entered the system,” he ordered his lieutenant.

He needed some air.

***********

The _Ghost_ docked with the Imperial container transport in a pocket of uninhabited space between the battlefield and the Atollon system—which Sabine _really_ hoped was as safe as Chopper’s friend seemed to think it was.

“Go pick them up and get them back here,” Hera ordered. “Wipe the transport’s memory banks and we’ll leave it and its captain here. Maybe he’ll have enough fuel to make it to a safe port.”

_And he wouldn’t be anywhere near Atollon._

“We’ll be right back,” Ezra promised. 

Sabine headed off with Zeb and Ezra through the eerily quiet transport. It should have held at least a dozen stormtroopers, but the lifesigns scan they’d run when they approached had only read the one organic. 

“I’m hoping Chopper managed to coax all the stormtroopers off the ship,” Sabine murmured. “I know he has a murderous streak, but I don’t want to think he’s capable of killing that many of us off at once.”

Ezra snorted in amusement. “Kind of makes you want to take him a little more seriously, huh?”

Zeb growled. “Kind of makes me want to disassemble him for our own safety.”

“If anyone is disassembling him, it’s going to be me,” Hera put in. Sabine didn’t _think_ she really meant it. Much.

“We can only hope,” Kanan had to put in over comms.

Sabine chuckled—but the chuckle died as the door to the bridge swished open. 

“Wow,” Ezra whispered into the sudden silence.

The captain of the ship was unconscious on the floor, a strut suspiciously like Chopper’s lying across him. His face was one big bruise—looked like Chopper had just slammed the strut right into it. That image would have been remarkable enough, but they all just stared for a moment at the sight of Chopper cradling the hand of a protocol droid who’d clearly been shot multiple times, and whose eyes and diodes were dark and powerless.

Chopper shook his head assemblage and laid the protocol droid’s hand down carefully before racing up to Sabine, banging her in the leg.

His friend was hurt and was probably dying, Chopper told her. And he was _important_. Hera-pilot would know what he meant. _She_ would help him! She had saved Chopper and she would save AP-5 and Sabine-warrior _had to help!_

“Calm down, Chopper,” Sabine murmured. “Just let us take a look at him.”

Ezra was already kneeling by the droid, looking unsure. Sabine examined it—AP-5, Chop had called it—and shook her head. She didn’t have the heart to tell the astromech that the hit to the RA-7 droid’s main processor had pretty much sealed its fate. 

“We’ll get it back to the _Ghost_ ,” she said finally. It was only marginally possible she could reconstruct its logic pathways, but for Chopper, she’d try. The Imperial droid hadn’t needed to warn them away from Yost, after all. It had done its part.

Ezra stood, looking up at Zeb and then down at the captain. “He… looks okay. I mean, he should wake up soon, right?” 

Sabine shrugged. “Hopefully after we’re gone. I’ll wipe the databanks.” It wouldn’t do for the droid to have sacrificed itself to get them to Atollon, only for the Empire to find them when they recovered this ship.

Why were they all dealing with organic things? Chopper wanted to know. Why weren’t they _helping_? 

“We are, Chop,” Sabine told him gently. It was kind of shocking to see their rude little astromech so undone. It reminded her of how he’d acted when Kanan had been taken by the Empire and she didn’t want to be reminded of that. “We’re just making sure that what he did for us is worth it.”

“Banks are wiped,” she said after a moment. “Let’s go.” She looked over at Zeb, who picked up the protocol droid with a surprising amount of care. 

Hera was waiting for them at the airlock, lighting into Chopper before the five of them even got back on board. 

“What did you think you were doing!?” she demanded, as Chopper led the entourage. “Of all the selfish…”

Sabine watched Hera’s lekku drop from their angry curl when the astromech gave a mournful little trill. Zeb came into the tunnel between the ships, carrying the protocol droid. Kanan was looking on from the cockpit, and Sabine looked up at him and shook her head.

“Oh, Chopper,” Hera said quietly, her whole demeanor softer now. 

Chopper rolled up to her, beeping pitifully. He hadn’t meant to go off on his own like that and she had to help his friend because he’d told the droid that Hera-pilot and her people were different from the Empire. They were better.

It was the most polite Sabine had ever heard the droid be to an organic. Ever.

“Sabine will do everything she can for him,” Hera promised, nodding to Sabine, who gestured for Zeb and Ezra to precede her into the common area. “Kanan, get us out of here.”

Kanan nodded, heading back into the cockpit, and the ship was detached and in hyperspace before Sabine had the RA-7 laid out on the work table.

_Hera-pilot and her people were different from the Empire. They were better._

Sabine got down to work. Far be it from her to prove Chopper wrong about that.

**********

Alexsandr was back to looking at the stars. It had been well longer than three hours, yet stars were the only view he had.

“Nothing has gone in or out of the system, sir,” his lieutenant announced unnecessarily. 

“Has any of the other teams made contact?” he asked. There absolutely was _not_ a part of him that hoped the answer was no.

But that was the answer anyway. “No, sir.”

“Get me Admiral Konstantine,” he ordered. “It appears our rebels did not take the bait.” 

“Yes, sir.”

He turned from the stars and stood at the holotable, waiting to re-engage in the seemingly endless search for the rebels who appeared more charmed than real, sometimes.

And again, no part of him was glad of the fact.

**********

_“The entire rebel fleet is betting on Chopper.”_

_“Yeah. Try not to think about it.”_

But her obnoxious little astromech had done good. Hera looked down at the silent, deserted planet in the silent deserted system, and smiled at the data the exploration team was sending back. Huge, fantastical tree corals would help camouflage the base, and there was at least a little moisture in the atmosphere. If no sizable underground aquifers could be found, they could always set up vaporators. It wouldn’t be the Upper Skies, but it could be a home.

Though maybe not for all of them. Kanan and Ezra continued to worry at her like hiddidees under her skin. 

They’d been quiet when they returned from their trip with Ahsoka. They’d explained that the three of them had traveled to the Jedi Temple on Lothal and that they’d received information, but Kanan insisted it wasn’t information that could be understood and shared just yet. They needed to work on what, exactly, it meant. He _had_ , at Ezra’s prompting, shyly announced that the temple had knighted him, but it seemed like he was conflicted about it, and that was making her even more concerned. She knew he was worried about the inquisitors finding them all, but she didn't want him doing something stupid to try to stop that from happening. 

It was all just too much like right before he’d been taken from them the last time. He was retreating into the Force, keeping secrets, training Ezra until the two of them should have been ready to drop but weren’t. And damn it, he wasn’t telling her _anything._

“How goes the survey?” he asked as he walked into the cockpit. Relaxed and silky. It was weird. He should have been exhausted after hours of saber work a day, but he just looked… ready.

For what, she was terrified to know.

“Good so far,” she managed. “And the droids?”

Kanan chuckled. “ _That_ is going to be interesting.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Sabine used that stolen strut to replace a few parts and got him working again—AP-5 is his name, by the way—and the very first thing he did was rip into Chopper for sacrificing the thing for him.” He looked out at the planet. “It’s like having Chopper in stereo, but one of him is speaking Basic.”

“Not sure how I feel about _that_ , but I think an ex-Imperial droid can’t be a bad thing to have on the team.”

“Agreed.”

They sat in a silence that wasn’t uncomfortable, and Hera _almost_ asked him. But even if she knew what he was planning for, there was nothing she could do and she knew it. She'd just have to wait and see what happened, like everyone else. 

"About time we had a base on the ground," she said instead. 

“Yeah,” he agreed, a softness to his voice. "It's going to take a lot to get it into shape, though."

"We can do it," she said confidently, throwing off her worries and the future she didn't have a window into the Force to see.

"I think you can do anything you put your mind to, Hera," he murmured, eyes riveted to her and pride thick in his voice.

" _We_ can," she corrected. Together, they could do pretty much anything.

Kanan's voice expanded, his words broadened to hide what he didn't want to say. “We still need to think of a name for this place.”

Hera let herself be distracted. She couldn’t change the Jedi _or_ the Force....

“How about Chopper Base?” she offered, because it was outrageous and it would make things normal and joking and not like any minute now Kanan and Ezra were just going to disappear and not come back.

“Actually…” Kanan murmured, sounding disturbingly okay with it.

“Oh you have _got_ to be kidding me!”

************

tbc...


	18. We Might be Going Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place around and in "The Mystery of Chopper Base."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason, the system didn't note that I updated a few days ago, so if you haven't read Chapter 17: The Waiting Part, you should do that before you read this.

“It looks like your ‘Chopper Base’ is just what we needed, Captain Syndulla.” Hera was glad to hear a satisfaction in Sato’s voice, mitigating the constant weariness that had settled into him as the months had dragged on. They’d gathered in the _Liberator_ ’s war room to discuss the set up and off-loading for the base; she and Kanan, plus Sato, Sabine, and Ezra.

“I still can’t believe we’re going with that,” Sabine grumbled.

“Talk to Kanan,” Hera shot back, grinning up at the man in question.

“You said it first,” he argued. 

Hera ignored him. “Rex and his people are laying down a preliminary landing site, Commander,” she reported. “Once we get the area secure, we can start bringing more of the larger freighters down.”

“I look forward to it,” Sato replied.

“Commander!” one of the communications officers called. “I have Commander Tano on an incoming transmission.”

Kanan tensed up just slightly, while Ezra looked expectant. Hera’s lekku abruptly tightened. 

“Put her through,” Sato commanded

Ahsoka was in her fighter, her holographic self seen from the waist up with the cockpit in the background. She looked tired. A little haunted even...

“How did you fare on your mission, Commander?” Sato asked.

“Jabba has agreed to allow the local cell to travel freely through Hutt space,” she announced. “I escorted the first rescue mission from Worforn.” She smiled in satisfaction. “I’m confident they’ll be able to move with impunity now. Jabba doesn’t suffer anyone breaking his rules lightly, and he’s made it clear they’re under his protection.”

“Well done, Commander,” Sato praised her. 

“I’ll be making a stop along the way to fuel up, but I should be able to meet up with the fleet in a few days.”

And then Hera held her breath as Ahsoka sought out Kanan—seeming to meet his eyes in that eerie way that Hera had only ever seen Kanan and Ezra do. Holograms weren’t made for that kind of precision, but somehow, Jedi always managed it. 

Kanan nodded the tiniest bit—Hera was probably the only one there who noticed. Well, and Ezra, who straightened up. Hera breathed out. _You can’t change the Jedi..._

“You’ll be meeting us at a more stable location,” she heard Sato say dimly.

There was a silence she wasn’t really privy to.

“Hera?” Kanan called, shaking her out of her thoughts. She looked up at him to see a flash of confusion and worry in his eyes. “Do you want to do the honors?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, rooting herself in right now and trying to shove her new knowledge to the back of her mind. When she spoke, her voice was smooth and competent as always. “We’ve found a base. Finally. I’ll transmit the coordinates.”

“Hera named it Chopper Base,” Ezra put in, his cheery addition wearing on Hera’s nerves.

Ahsoka’s eyes widened. “I see,” she murmured. “I look forward to finding out about that.”

 _I look forward to the three of you actually admitting to what you’re planning._ Hera’s anger started simmering. Kanan had clearly just been waiting for Ahsoka to return. He hadn’t trusted Hera to know what was going on before that…

“I’ll meet you all soon,” Ahsoka said before signing off. Hera had missed something of the conversation, but she didn’t care.

“Docking Bay 2 of the carrier is being used as a staging area,” Sabine said, taking over the briefing. Hera watched her, letting pride take over from her own thoughts. Sabine had grown into an amazing woman. Capable, forthright. A leader.

“We need to make sure the generators are up and working before we put too many more people on the ground,” Sabine continued. 

“We’ll start loading now,” Hera agreed. “Zeb’s already on the carrier, helping organize the shipments.”

“AP-5 is on the ground,” Kanan said, a smile in his voice that grated at her. “He’s ‘supervising.’ Or so he says.”

“He might be as annoying as Chopper,” Ezra muttered. Hera was sure he only said it because the astromech was with Zeb on the carrier, unable to smack him for the sentiment.

“At least he’s organized,” Kanan shot back easily. “You’re not going to be able to set up this base without that kind of precision, right?”

 _You’re_ not going to be able… Right. Because he and Ezra would be gone soon. 

“If we’re going to set up at all, we’d better get moving,” Hera forced herself to say brightly. She nodded to Commander Sato. “We’ll head over and load up,” she told him.

“Thank you, Captain,” Sato replied.

And Hera led her people out. Because that was what she did. No matter how much she wanted to turn on Kanan and demand to know what they were planning, she didn’t. She led. 

“You okay, Hera?” Kanan asked in an undertone as they headed back to the _Ghost_ ’s airlock.

She wasn’t. Not by a long shot. “I’m fine,” she lied. “Just ready to get this all done.”

_Get it all done so you can go do your Jedi thing._

_Like last time._

She took a deep breath and forged on.

*************

Sabine was captivated. 

She’d seen Kanan and Ezra spar before, but they’d made leaps and bounds since returning from Lothal. She tried to push the unease she felt about that to the back of her mind and lose herself in the saberplay.

The last of the generators were tucked off to the side of the _Ghost’s_ cargo bay, giving the two Jedi room to move. This was shipment number… five? Six, maybe? She’d seriously lost count and she was exhausted. Hera was exhausted—even _Zeb_ was exhausted. But every trip down, except for the first two when the hold was too full for them to fight, Kanan and Ezra had been going at it.

Hera climbed slowly down the ladder and stood next to her on the catwalk, out of the way of the combatants. And Sabine made no mistake—this was combat.

At the thought, her anxiety rose again. She’d lived in war her entire life. She knew what preparing for imminent battle looked like. They were leaving. They were leaving as soon as Ahsoka got back, she’d wager.

Hera knew combat, too. Sabine watched the Twi’lek’s lekku stiffen as Kanan and Ezra drew to a tie once more, Kanan’s blade slipping smoothly into a gutting stroke while Ezra confidently went for the throat. 

Ezra backed off first. It was a bad habit. He could kill himself in a fight by disengaging too soon.

“Tied again?” he groused. Sabine could have told him that wasn’t the way it worked.

Kanan did it for her. “There’s no such thing as a tie,” he grated, as if he’d said it too many times before. “You lose, you die.”

Hera gasped. Tiny, hidden, almost unnoticeable.

“Yeah, and you win by killing an inquisitor,” Ezra bit out. This _was_ an argument they’d had before. 

“No. You win by surviving,” Kanan announced. The skies’ honest truth.

Hera’s muscles were tight as neekoon strings, singing through the air of the cargo bay.

“You guys are getting pretty good!” Sabine called, more to stop the argument and distract herself from Hera’s pain than to distract Hera herself. But Hera jumped at the way Sabine raised her voice to be heard.

“Getting?” Ezra barked, sounding for all the world like a green soldier whose fragile honor had been offended. “Are you saying we weren’t good before?” 

Sabine was frozen by her own revelation. Because Ezra _wasn’t_ green. He’d fought enough to know what she meant. Soldiers who didn’t have their heads in the game got their heads taken off. Kanan was watching his sparring partner like he knew the same thing.

“I think she just meant you’re… even better now,” Hera put in, giving Sabine a minute to compose herself.

“I’ll take it,” Ezra replied—

—and Kanan struck. The way Sabine would have. The way the _enemy_ was absolutely going to if Ezra didn’t watch himself.

But he did—at least enough to fight off the stroke that wouldn’t have landed anyway. The enemy’s stroke would land.

“You never turn your back on an enemy,” Kanan declared, shutting off his saber and standing back.

“Okay,” Ezra replied. Sabine wondered if he’d actually learned anything. “But since when are you my enemy?”

There was an old Mandalorian saying: _If the enemy always looked like an enemy, he’d never get close enough to strike._ Sometimes the attack came from a quarter you never expected.

“Let’s go again.” Kanan took up a far more open stance. Arrogant. Taunting. She’d watched him start each volley with a different demeanor as he trained Ezra for anything. He really was an excellent teacher...

And beside her, Hera seemed to droop just a little bit more.

**********

Ezra liked the base. It was quiet. Sunny, like Lothal had been when he was a kid. Like maybe it would be again.

_Wonder if I’ll live to see that._

He shook his head at the thought and looked up at the tree coral above him. They were fantastic—if the conical rocks at home had sprouted leaves, they’d be these corals. He climbed it carefully, going up a few branches until he was well above the base, and knelt down, closing his eyes and trying to clear his mind.

It was a pretty full place to clear. He and Kanan hadn’t only been fighting the last few weeks. Kanan had taught him how to reach out to and how to draw back from the Force. He’d taught him to hide himself and his thoughts, to prod at someone else to get around their shields. He’d taught him to strive for peace as a way to strengthen himself. 

Ezra was still working on that one.

“You can survive a lot if you can find a center,” Kanan had told him. 

Their training had made Ezra bolder. “Is that how you got through what happened on the _Sovereign_?” he asked. Because at this point, he really needed to know. The closer this all came to reality (whatever this all was), the more Ezra’s head was filled with the possibility of not coming back from it.

Kanan hadn’t closed down. He didn’t do that now. He sat quietly for a moment, though, and must have been thinking of the best way to respond. “In part,” he admitted. And then he smiled. “In part I just tried to think about not being there.”

“That Here and There thing?” Ezra had asked. “I still don’t get it.”

“I know,” Kanan had told him. “Maybe someday you will.”

_If we make it through all this._

He shook his head. Meditation wasn’t going to happen, clearly. Too much in his head.

He slid down the coral and went looking for Zeb. To… say goodbye. Just in case.

**********

Zeb let himself sink into the music as he sat with his eyes closed and felt the heat shift on his fur as the sun started going down. Ezra sat silently above him on the crates—seeking the high ground had always been the kid's defense mechanism. It’d been a long day—long year, really. It seemed like they’d all left a kind of home when they left Lothal, and they’d been looking for a new one ever since. For a few minutes, he was content to have his feet on dirt and a plan.

It wasn’t quite like Lasan; the planning and the set-up and the digging in. Lasan had been his—he’d known the best places to hide the emplacements, the best spots for the ambushes. But it _was_ like being in the army again. Rex understood. 

Ezra didn’t, but Ashla willing, he’d live long enough to learn.

Zeb hadn’t needed the kid to tell him he and Kanan were leaving. He’d known the moment the two of them came back from that Jedi Temple. They had to go after the inquisitors or it was all for nothing, really. The damn red blades kept finding them wherever they went, so if they stayed, it was only a matter of time before the drabbers found Atollon, too. 

Kanan would never risk that. He’d never risk it, but he’d never leave Hera either—unless he couldn’t help it—so the answer was to hunt the hunters down and have done with.

And hopefully survive the fight.

“Zeb, Ezra, we need you at the _Ghost_.” Hera’s voice was tense, and Zeb didn’t even question. Just shut off his music and started back toward the ship.

“What’s going on?” Ezra asked into his own comm. 

“Sabine and Rex are in trouble,” Hera answered shortly.

So Zeb moved faster.

“They said they were checking out a missing pilot,” Ezra offered to Zeb, jogging to keep up. “How can we already have trouble? We just got here?”

Zeb trotted up the cargo ramp and slammed his hand on the button to close it as Ezra scooted in after him.

“Face it, kid,” Zeb grumbled, heading upstairs. “Trouble just naturally follows us, doesn’t it?”

**********

Kanan sat in the copilot’s seat, making no sudden movements.

“You could have told me,” Hera told him quietly.

She was mad. Unlike him, she could _do_ mad. Really mad.

“You knew when you left Lothal, didn’t you?” she asked, rushing on before he could speak. “What am I saying. You probably knew before you left _for_ Lothal.”

Kanan opened his mouth, but didn’t get a sound out before Hera went on.

“It’s not like you’re just going off on a mission, Kanan,” she told him. “And yes, I understand that they’re a threat to more than just the two of you, but there are other threats.”

She paused, and he considered speaking.

“Other threats that we might need you on.”

Okay… Don’t speak.

“And you’re _still_ not going to say anything, are you?” she accused.

Oops.

“Hera, if they find us here, the entire squadron will be destroyed,” he said quietly. “You know that.” He pushed. A little. “ _Your_ squadron.”

“Yes,” she bit back. “ _My_ squadron. That _I_ have to protect.”

“I’m trying to protect them, too.”

She didn’t even seem to hear that, and the silence was thick and itchy and more uncomfortable than it had ever been because Kanan knew Hera wasn’t _choosing_ this silence. Her lack of balance was forcing it.

“It’s going to change when I can’t count on you anymore.”

It shouldn’t have hurt. Kanan knew she was worried, and yes, she was mad—she had a right to be. He should have told her their plans before there were even plans but… But there hadn’t been any plans to tell her!

And all he’d done for the last year, it seemed, was work on getting her to this point—this point he still really didn’t totally want to be at. He didn’t want it to bother him—

 _“I know Jedi aren’t supposed to hate, but I_ hate _that!”_ Remembered words from the War were never more appropriate.

“Hera—” he began.

“We’re coming up on Sabine and Rex’s last known location,” she barked, cutting him off. “Can you get downstairs and get ready, please?”

“Are you sure you can count on me?” he asked coldly. He slid down the ladder and out of sight before she could answer.

**********

“Don’t worry. _I’ll_ handle it.”

Sabine tried not to sigh too loudly as Hera headed out of the cockpit after slamming Kanan’s attempt at getting back in her good graces. Granted, it was a lousy attempt, but Hera didn’t need to smack him down quite that hard.

“Wonder if there’s enough sensors to build a fence against these buggers,” Rex asked, falling into the jump chair behind Zeb. 

“I doubt it,” Sabine answered, biting her tongue when all she really wanted to do was get Kanan alone and just… knock some sense into him.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t get a few more,” Zeb commented.

“A lot more,” Ezra piped up from his perch in the forward guns.

“I’m sure Hera’s thought of that already.” Kanan was angry, which Sabine hadn’t seen much of in their lives together. He was hurt, too, which wasn’t surprising or new, but he wasn’t good at getting angry like this. It was probably the Jedi in him.

He piloted the _Ghost_ back to base and landed, then got out of the cockpit before Hera came back from wherever she’d gone.

It was probably the Jedi in him that made him so completely blind to what was going on here, too.

“Kanan and Hera seem…” Rex shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Prickly,” Zeb offered. 

Sabine stood up and headed to her room in disgust.

Maybe not Jedi. Maybe just _men._

*******

“Hera, I’m sorry.”

Hera looked up from the holotable they’d set up off to the side of the flight deck. Kanan stood there, waiting, patient. The anger she knew she’d provoked last night was gone, as brief as anger ever was with him, and in its place was a calm that was so much worse. 

Once they’d gotten back to base and she’d checked in with Sato, who was waiting in orbit with the rest of the fleet, Hera thought about apologizing. She did. But she didn’t really know what to say. 

Apparently Kanan did.

“I should have told you when we got back from Lothal,” he admitted. “But… There was nothing to tell yet, Hera.” He hung his head. “You have the base now. I know Sabine’s idea will work out. We’ll find what we need—whatever it is Yoda is sending us off to find. And we’ll take care of the inquisitors.” He stepped closer, and Hera let herself enjoy the feel of his hands on her shoulders, even though _we’ll come home_ wasn’t on his to-do list. “You know we can’t risk leading them here. And we can’t keep running.”

She did. She knew that. “I don’t have to like it,” she whispered.

Kanan gave her that smile that had charmed her from the first, though she’d never admit it. “I don’t have to either.”

********

Ezra had gone out in the pre-dawn light to meditate, finding peace this morning after last night’s excitement. Once he was done, when the sun had come up, he went straight to Sabine’s door. Ahsoka was going to be here soon—maybe today soon—and he’d said goodbye to Zeb, but he’d just never had a chance… Never had a way…

And then there was Hera, and he didn't even know how to _begin_ saying goodbye to her.

“She’s not there,” Zeb called from their shared room. He walked to the door and leaned against it. “She’s painting the new A-wing that just came in.”

Ezra smiled softly. Yeah, that sounded just about right.

He wandered out to the flight deck and followed the smell of paint and the feel of Sabine’s signature. 

The little fighter she was working on had seen better days, but the parts she’d already gotten to looked almost new.

“Not bad,” he called out.

She stepped away from the cloud of spray paint and smiled at him. “Thanks.”

The starbird graced the dorsal wing, the phoenix she’d come up with long before there was a Phoenix squadron. It was becoming a symbol of the whole rebellion now. A rebellion she’d have a hand in leading, he was sure.

“I wanted…” _To say goodbye? In case I don’t come back? In case…_ This had been easier with Zeb. “Well, Ahsoka’s going to be here soon, and…”

Sabine walked up to him, looking serious and big sister and fellow soldier. "Be careful," she told him quietly. "And never turn your back on an enemy."

Ezra grinned. "Yeah, I got that."

Her own grin was soft and caring, and Ezra just fixed the moment in his mind. Like when he and Zeb were watching the sunset. “You’ll be back,” she assured him.

“Yeah,” he said, trying for positive, though the weight in his soul didn’t seem to ever lift these last couple of days. “Yeah, I know. I just, you know…”

Sabine surprised him with a hug. “Yeah, I know.”

And just the feel of her arms around him made it better, somehow.

Hera watched from the holotable. She watched as Ezra and Sabine said goodbye, and wondered when it would be her turn. And what she’d say when it was. 

**********

Turned out there weren’t enough sensors for the whole base, but there were enough to make a start. First thing the morning after their run-in with the crawlers, Rex had set off with a few of the rebels Hera had started thinking of as _his_ crew, hoping to pick up some at one of the larger ports in the nearby systems.

Four hours later, Ahsoka announced she’d be there soon.

So they could leave. So _Kanan and Ezra_ could leave.

She knew Ezra could take care of himself—far better than she'd been able to at his age—and he was hardly a child anymore, but... But he was hers. Like Zeb and Sabine. And Kanan...

Hera and Kanan had, for her entire adult life, done for each other. They’d taken care of each other; fought _with_ each other and _for_ each other. They’d done it _together_. And the times they hadn’t done it together—when she took off on her own on Talion, when he sent them all ahead of him at the communications tower of Lothal—things had gone disastrously, nearly fatally wrong.

He shouldn’t be doing this.

And yet… He really had no choice. She turned and looked at him, as he and Sabine watched the fence being built—what they had of it for now—and she knew he had no choice. The inquisitors would find them eventually. And if they found the base, Vader would find the base and then Tarkin would find the base and then one of the largest cells in the Rebellion would be dust. Crawler food.

But it didn’t mean she had to be okay with the fact that Kanan was preparing not to come back, just like he had before Mustafar.

He trained Ezra like he had to teach him everything _now_ , before it was too late to teach him more. The Rebellion was a legacy, not a team he was working with. He didn’t think he was coming home.

And she wasn’t really sure he was, either. She feared the next time she thought he was dead, he actually would be.

“Hera?” he called.

 _Bad luck to think like that,_ Zeb’s oft-spoken superstition rang in her mind. She slapped a smile on her face and turned toward him.

“I told the commander the site is secure and operations can resume.”

“We’re… going to be okay,” he bumbled. “You know that, right?” 

Really? He was going to try that _now_? “You realize I know when you’re lying, right?”

He sighed, caught, and the fear welled up in her.

“Whatever you’re facing, I wanted us to face it together.” Together had been the only way they got through _anything_. Apart was when things... fell apart.

“We’ll see each other again,” he said quietly, taking her shoulders and holding her eyes with his sincere gaze. 

_He almost believes what he’s saying._

“I promise.”

He held her to him, and Hera melted in. Just fixed the moment in her mind because she might not get another.

“Just tell me you haven’t had any visions lately,” she whispered into his chest. 

“Not a one,” he murmured back, holding her tighter. 

Hera let herself be held.

********

Ezra looked at the crew as he and Ahsoka walked back to the _Ghost_. They were all waiting there, and he wished Rex had been there as well, to see Ahsoka off.

“Take care of them, Chopper,” Hera commanded.

Chopper didn’t think the humans were at all capable of being sensible, so it was good he was going along.

Ezra grinned at that. 

“And take care of each other,” she commanded the rest of them. Hera stepped forward and folded him into her arms and Ezra closed his eyes. They hadn't said goodbye in private, but maybe they didn't need to.

“We’ll be okay,” he promised. And in that moment, he actually believed it. 

Which sort of made him want the moment to last forever.

************

tbc...


	19. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "Twilight of the Apprentice."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you all how sorry I am for the delay on this chapter. It was... an odyssey.

There was symmetry here, Maul thought as he set course toward Dathomir. The Eighth Brother (and did Sidious have _no_ imagination anymore? Or had Vader given their pets their names?) had been the one to damage Maul’s craft enough for it to be unflyable by the time it limped into the atmosphere on Malachor. It was fitting that Maul was using the inquisitor’s own vehicle to escape.

 _Escape._ It still left a bitter sting in his mouth. Vader, as expected, had ruined everything. With a little help. Maul had been ready to sacrifice his apprentice to achieve his goals if need be, but he had not counted on Vader being so speedy in his arrival. And yet, somehow Ezra had survived. Survived and activated the temple…

Ezra had the potential to become the perfect apprentice—indeed, their bond was already forged. The child had a talent for connection, it was plain to feel. Had Kanan not forced Maul to abandon the temple, he could have used Ezra to find the truth he sought. To find that truth and to finally, _finally_ , exact his revenge. On all of them. Sidious, Vader, Qi’ra, _Kenobi_ if it were possible… all of them. And now he was left with nothing. Again.

Perhaps not nothing. He had learned, long, long ago, that every situation left one with something salvageable.

He cleared his mind and focused. Returning to Malachor had been difficult. But the planet he had seen in his dreams since he was little more than a youngling had recently begun calling to him again. Regardless of his statement to his young apprentice, he’d arrived at the temple no more than a day before the others, driven by the images in his mind.

He’d seen too clearly a vision of Sidious’s apprentice. And of the return of the rogue Jedi he’d met in combat once before. He wondered if Lady Tano had ever truly accepted her master’s fate. He _had_ tried to warn her, after all.

_“I trust you have finally divined the truth of Vader’s existence,” he’d asked her bluntly, as they rode the lift on the side of the temple, the black power of Malachor surrounding them._

_Lady Tano had glared, the fire he’d seen in her youth still there in eyes far too old. “You must have given Ezra quite a tale to get him to believe you were actually here to help,” she said, refusing to answer him, though he could see the truth in her face._

_“I am, Lady Tano,” he assured her. “As seems often to happen, your goals and mine—at this time—overlap.”_

_“At this time.”_

_Maul chuckled. She really would never learn. “Of course. No one’s goals overlap all of the time, do they? Not even yours and your master’s.”_

_Tano twitched in response to the barb, but she did not rise to the bait. Oh, if only he could have convinced her to join forces with him all those years ago._

_“You could have stopped this, Lady Tano—we could have stopped this together.”_

_“You were working for yourself, Maul,” she grated. “You always have been.”_

And of course, he was. But it didn’t mean that he couldn’t join forces with the enemy when it suited both of them. Ezra had seen it clearly, even as Kanan tried to convince him of the “errors of his ways.” A weapon has no light or dark. Only utility. Something Skywalker’s apprentice had never understood.

His own words from years ago rang in his mind. _“I see the Padawan needs one last lesson.”_

Alas, it appeared she needed two. She was gone from the Force, now, as far as he could tell. Her master’s last lesson must have gone badly.

But he could still feel Ezra. Feel his pain, his guilt, his fear. Like a beacon, the child’s anger and betrayal rang through the Force to him. Bright and hot and so much more powerful than Savage had been. Maul’s hands gripped the controls more tightly in grief. Another bitter thought to add to the collection.

Yes, Ezra would make a fitting apprentice. Maul’s mind cast back to another Jedi Padawan whose anger and fearlessness could have served him just as well, had it been the correct time. Ezra was more powerful than Eldra Kaitis had been, yet more untrained. His anger could be fed, his connection to the Force liberated. He would be Maul’s… someday.

Patience. Again. A lesson he had finally learned after Savage was taken from him. Maul needed to recover and to plan. He would return home and discover what he could about these Jedi. Only then could he get Ezra away from the master who clearly did not deserve him. More bitterness grew in his heart. That Kanan could best him—even for a moment…

Whether the maimed Jedi had survived was unclear. Ezra’s grief was so very bright and harsh that Kanan and Skywalker’s apprentice could both be gone, but luck was never with Maul quite that much. No, he was certain that Kanan was alive, at least.

But that didn’t need to be a permanent situation, did it?

It was, of course, too much to hope that the destruction of the temple might have brought an end to Skywalker himself. Darth Vader had survived more than… well, almost more than he himself had, he supposed. No, he thought darkly, as he slid into hyperspace, Vader was still alive. And that didn’t have to be permanent, either.

Maul smiled to himself. He would return home; rest, recuperate. He would learn more about his apprentice and his friends. And he would plan.

 _“It’s a holocron. My master has one. But it’s different.”_ Two holocrons: the dark and the light….

His smile grew. The galaxy had yet to truly best him. He wouldn’t let it do so now.

***********

Vader limped from the ruins, his lungs barely taking in the hot, fetid, ashen air of Malachor. The battle had damaged his communications array along with his life support, making the distance to his ship painfully far. He hadn’t been able to call it to him, but it stood solidly on the desolate plain, undamaged by the temple’s collapse. He had but to reach it, and its life support would keep him whole until he could return to the tanks on Mustafar.

His master would not be pleased with the temple’s demise, nor that of the inquisitors. The Jedi Kanan Jarrus and his padawan had taken the holocron, but they and it had certainly been destroyed in the explosion that had nearly claimed his own life. Strange, though, that Bridger had somehow activated the temple itself—a feat no Jedi should have been able to accomplish.

_“I am no Jedi.”_

The servos in his left leg gave out suddenly, tumbling him to the ground, where he lay for a moment, staring into the clouds above.

_Ahsoka._

The fire and sadness in her eyes when she had challenged him… So like the padawan who had turned her back on Anakin Skywalker, only to return to him at the end neither of them had seen coming.

_“Hello, Master. It’s been a while.”_

Clearly, she’d learned much in the intervening years. A worthy opponent, if not the adversary she could have been.

_“We need not be adversaries.”_

Vader pulled himself to his feet, walking unevenly toward where his ship waited.

_“My master could never be as vile as you.”_

No matter. He had felt her power cut off in the Force above him as he plummeted to the temple’s lower levels. She had gained nothing.

_“I won’t leave you. Not this time.”_

Vader shook off the sudden echo of her in the Force. Anakin Skywalker was _weak_. His attachments, his concern…

_“Then you will die.”_

Vader’s ship welcomed him, its cables and conduits attaching to his damaged suit and reviving his systems. He wasted no time in urging it to take him home.

At least in her death, his master would be pleased. The last of Anakin Skywalker’s weaknesses had finally been destroyed.

_“Anakin…”_

And with her destruction, Vader himself grew more powerful. He and his master would prevail.

No matter the cost.

************

Ahsoka hit the ground of Malachor with a force she hadn’t quite been ready for. Her arm and side, already aching from the Emperor’s attack, screamed in pain and she lay still, eyes closed as she tried to calm her breathing. The darkness and tragedy of Malachor seeped into her as she rested, and tortured words floated through her head.

_“This was a battlefield.”_

Kanan. Kanan who was—would be—dead. Sacrificed to the survival of the family he had built around him. Sacrificed for the apprentice who was more a son.

Morai’s sad hoot broke through Ahsoka’s paralysis and she stood stiffly, looking behind her as if she could see into the future she’d just left. A future she wished she could change, even as she marveled at the man Ezra had become because of it.

She was at the base of the temple, Force knew how far below the surface. Morai launched into the air, and Ahsoka somehow knew her friend was going to check on the rest of the planet. To keep her safe. _“I owe her my life. And now I owe you that as well.”_

“May the Force be with you, Ezra Bridger,” she murmured.

The ruins of the temple called to her, and she followed their tune without thinking. A sound like a bright light too long smothered, as if the planet was trying to renew itself, now that the temple’s evil was gone. Ahsoka limped her way forward, feeling the _thing_ that had been her own master, as it limped toward its own safety somewhere above.

_“You can’t save your master. And I can’t save mine.”_

What she’d do now, she had no idea. When she escaped Malachor, she could return to Atollon. She could try, subtly, to change the future she’d just seen.

Ezra’s voice, defiant and hurt and longing, rang in her ears, even above the timid song of the planet around her. _“If I can change your fate, I can change his!”_

“He who seeks to control fate will never find peace,” she whispered, the truth of the old saying thrumming through the Force. She couldn’t change it—even if she returned to Atollon immediately, the world had already turned a corner she couldn’t see. And returning to anywhere was a feat that would take some doing. As it was, she barely felt strong enough to reach the temple walls.

But soon enough, those walls welcomed her, and, exhausted, Ahsoka fell to her knees just within the entrance.

Morai swooped in behind her, hooting softly as if asking after her.

“I’m all right,” she assured her. The planet’s song was louder here. A dim light within the temple burned and beckoned. Morai hopped ahead of her a few steps; looked back and hooted to draw her forward.

Which felt right. It felt necessary. Exhaustion was immaterial when the Force willed, and Ahsoka found her feet again, walking forward to meet Morai, who took her place on Ahsoka’s forearm guard.

The walls were warmer, the light growing ahead of them. The song became an invitation.

“Ezra has his journey,” she told her companion wryly, “and, it appears, I have mine.”

_“When you get back, come and find me!”_

The planet sang.

“I will. I promise,” she whispered.

She just wasn’t sure when that was going to be.

************

Hera’s hands shook in her lap as she continued to stare into the desert surrounding Chopper Base. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since the call from the _Phantom_ had ended. Ezra hadn’t even activated a holographic connection. Audio only—as if he couldn’t stand to let her see…

_“We’ll see each other again.”_

“Oh, Kanan.”

 _“I can’t tell much with the—”_ Ezra’s words had snapped off in a sob, but he’d pulled himself together as best he could. _“Lightsaber burns. I can’t tell how bad it really is.”_

He was lying, but she couldn’t bring herself to call him on it. It was all she could do to just breathe.

 _“Where is Ahsoka?”_ She couldn’t believe now, looking out at the sands, that she’d actually asked the question. The crushing silence afterward made her feel like a monster for adding to his pain.

 _“We couldn’t… We had to leave without her. She_ made _me leave.”_

The echo of her own response to Kanan’s sacrifice of last year was just as angry and disbelieving. But Goddess, Ezra had sounded so destroyed. She’d always secretly thought he had the potential to be the strongest of all of them, even stronger than Kanan when it came down to it, but… Everyone had their breaking point.

 _“Should I… Should we just come home?”_ Ezra had asked in a tiny, defeated voice. He was looking to her to help, to fix things, and she’d never felt _less_ up to the job. But Kanan was… hurt. Kanan was _hurt_.

 _“Can you get him to Tonna?”_ she’d asked finally, thinking of the nearest out-of-the-way planet that would still have whatever medical help they needed.

 _“Sure, I can._ I’m _not the one hurt,”_ Ezra had said with a derisive snort.

Hera didn’t believe that for a minute—his heartbreak had been plain in the silence when she’d asked him about Ahsoka, in the halting words as he told her about Kanan. She wasn’t even certain from the tone of his voice if he was _physically_ injured.

_“I’ll get him to Tonna. I’ll… I’ll let you know what they say.”_

Which left her with more waiting.

There was a sandstorm growing far off in the distance, and she just looked at it, watching it form, refusing to let tears cloud her vision. He was alive—they were _both_ alive. She could cling to that now as she always did. Death was the only situation that couldn’t be worked around.

Her thoughts swirled with the sands out beyond the coral trees. The Kanan she’d met eight years ago would be crushed by this. No, actually he’d probably just pretend it didn’t bother him, or that he could live with it, all the while dying inside. She’d seen his face way back then, when he looked at Zaluna, after the blood had been cleaned away and all there was left was the Sullustan’s blindness…

Was _he_ bleeding? Had… had Ezra had to deal with that, like the puddle of blood on Kaller? Ezra had been silent for almost a day after that. His first brush with Kanan’s mortality. But not hers. Oh no. It was almost a regular thing, actually—Kanan almost dying. Should have been a joke, but it wasn’t.

And what had happened to Ahsoka? Skies, what had happened to all of them!?

The sandstorm blew itself out quickly, and Hera’s eyes drifted, falling on Sabine as the Mandalorian strode across the tarmac toward one of the fighters just landing in the growing twilight. It had been hours since Ezra called. Hours…

What would Hera tell her, tell all of them? What could she say when she knew next to nothing? And when the next to nothing that she _did_ know was so painful?

“Hey, Hera—”

Hera spun around in shock to see Zeb in the doorway. She hadn’t even heard him enter the ship.

Zeb read her easily—as if he’d been expecting bad news. He took one tentative step forward and a cold silence hung between them for so long she thought she’d scream.

“You heard something?” he finally asked.

And Hera dredged up the strength to tell him what little she knew.

********

 _It was the third time they’d practiced in their blast shields, eyes covered as they fought against the little balls that floated and stung and drove four-year-old Caleb totally crazy. He was getting better, but he still only_ heard _the world around him. He didn’t_ feel _it or_ see _it, like they were supposed to._

_“Now, Younglings,” Master Yoda said in his musical voice. “See what you cannot see. Feel the Force. Let it flow through you. See into it, the world beyond the shield.”_

_Caleb stood perfectly still, breathing deeply. In total darkness. He didn’t see anything._

_“Tell you where your friends are, the Force will.”_

_Tai was right next to him—she had been since they put on their helmets. Sammo was behind him. He sort of felt them through the Force, but only as much as he ever did. He could feel the crystals in their sabers more._

_A loud hum came from the front of the room. Caleb waited for it to diffuse itself, as each drone found its target._

_But this time, it didn’t. It hovered there, still._

_“Tell you where your enemy is, as well.”_

_Yoda’s voice drifted to the back of his mind, as Kanan raised his saber in a purely defensive pose. The hilt before his face, shaft off to the side as he listened._

_The singing of a kyber crystal—right at the front of the class, where the drones should be—led him. He blocked out everything except the sound of it. Off-tune, screeching in pain—_

Kanan cried out as he came awake and instinctively tried to blink his eyes open to wipe away the memory of his last battle with Maul. The feel of the movement of his eyelids—aborted by the burns that had savaged them—was excruciating, dry and tight and searing.

“Kanan?”

Ezra’s voice was tear-filled and exhausted, and Kanan tried to push away the pain and get himself together. He had had the presence of mind to constrict the flow of the bond between himself and Ezra, right after Maul had fallen from the temple. Every word Ezra had uttered from the moment Chopper helped Kanan find him told Kanan that Ezra was already terrified and hurting for him, and he just couldn’t add to it.

But he couldn’t stop himself from hurting, either. He had to simply shut it all away or risk enveloping his apprentice in this hell.

“Kanan, are you…?”

“Where are we?” Kanan asked before Ezra could finish. They both knew it was no use asking how he was. He was blind. Ruined. Defeated. He pushed himself to sitting and waited for the world to right itself. Dizziness without vision was somehow worse than seeing the world yaw around him.

“I, um… We’re headed for Tonna,” Ezra murmured. He was… in the pilot’s seat? Maybe. Far from Kanan, anyway. “Hera suggested it. She said we should stop there, get some—”

“No,” Kanan ordered. “Chop, set course for Atollon.” Hera had suggested it. Which meant she knew. He thought he’d told Ezra to call her, but everything after Malachor was a blur. He hadn’t exactly been with it.

Chopper thought Atollon was a horrible idea. There was no hospital on Atollon.

Ezra clearly agreed. “The _Nyaga An_ is on a relief mission, remember? We barely have an aid station on Atollon right now. You need medical—”

Kanan shook his head, gritting his teeth as the movement made his senses swim again. “We can’t stop there. The Empire’s—”

“No one there is going to know who we are,” Ezra protested. “The Empire barely has a presence on Tonna.”

“But when they see this, they’ll know what happened,” Kanan cut in. He gestured unsteadily to himself, to the bacta wrapping that was barely keeping the pain from overwhelming him. “This is…” Actually, he didn’t know what this was. He couldn’t see the damage done—he couldn’t see anything at all. Which was exactly the problem. Panic stalked him, managing to overwhelm even the pain as he tried to beat it back.

Ezra was suddenly very close, though not touching. “We can say… It was an engine malfunction,” he offered lamely, “or…”

“I’m sure it only looks like what it is, Ezra,” Kanan whispered, willing the panic down so he could deal with this. “Lightsaber wounds are… distinctive. It only takes one person to recognize it and say something.”

“Kanan—”

“Get us home, Chopper.” It was really all Kanan wanted anyway. Home. Hera.

_“We’ll see each other again.”_

Force, he’d screwed up.

“No.” Ezra’s voice lost its tears, anger taking their place.

Always anger. Maybe the Temple Guard had the right of it. Kanan had failed—failed spectacularly—and now it was just a matter of time before Ezra fell.

_“Maul sees what I could be. You don’t.”_

“No. Chop, keep going.” Ezra’s hand was suddenly on Kanan’s arm, and Kanan batted him away and jerked back in surprise, damning himself when Ezra hissed and withdrew. “I can see—” Erza broke off and Kanan realized it was because he’d used a word that was going to be forbidden for a while, no doubt. The boy breathed out raggedly and began again. “I can get some better supplies.” His voice broke on the last word. “Some more pain meds, at least?”

Pain meds. And that hiss.

“You’re hurt.” Ezra was hurt, and Kanan hadn’t even known it. Because he was too blind to see it. Kriff, he’d been blind even before Maul had taken his sight.

“I’m okay,” Ezra insisted, that reflexive denial that had always been his go-to when he was hurt or sick or otherwise felt himself a burden.

“No,” Kanan sighed. “You’re not. Neither of us are.” He wanted to believe they would be again someday, but right now… “All right,” he allowed finally. “We’ll go to Tonna.”

Good, Chopper told him, because they were nearly there already and there was no point in changing trajectory now.

The pain kept Kanan annoyingly awake and silence lay thick between them for too long. He had no idea how to break it. What could he say? “I’m sorry” was… pitifully inadequate.

“Ahsoka…” Ezra’s whisper was tentative and followed by yet more silence. But in his mind, Kanan heard the Togruta’s sharp command through the Force: _Kanan, GO!_

At least she hadn’t asked him to run, right?

“She called Vader… Master,” Ezra finally continued. Kanan’s throat tightened. _No._ “She said… She said she thought she knew who he was. But that her master could never be that vile.”

 _Kriff._ Kanan’s mind tried to reject the idea of someone like Anakin Skywalker turning so completely… But the Inquistor’s face—the _Temple Guard’s_ face—floated through his memory. _Ahsoka._

“Do you think she survived?”

Kanan tried to find something to say to that. Something calming and sage and not a ripped through piece of his own psyche as he thought about what she must have gone through. He remembered the days after Depa. Hunger and desperation threw him forward into each day—terror at being discovered—but the nights… There was little to get him through the nights at all. What did you do when you’d lost your master? The one person in the galaxy who understood you like that.

And how much more hopeless would he have been if Depa had _turned?_ Ahsoka would have had no reason to survive that fight… Only a determination to make sure her master did no more damage.

The ship around him lurched as they dropped out of hyperspace, jarring him from his thoughts. Did it always lurch like that, or was it just his current state that made it that much more pronounced?

“Yeah,” Ezra breathed, defeated by his master’s lack of response. “I just hoped.”

An inane Jedi saying ran through Kanan’s mind: When all seems hopeless, a true hero gives hope.

Too bad Kanan had nothing to give. So much for a master’s wisdom.

He remembered what Ezra’s face probably looked like at this moment, but the memory didn’t help him deal with _right now,_ did it? He could feel the ship swooping into the atmosphere, the gentle yaw and roll of it—Chopper was flying more carefully than usual, apparently. But Kanan couldn’t see anything. And without his sight, how could he even hope to be Ezra’s master anymore?

_“Without sight, your other senses become more acute.”_

_“But how, Master Kenobi?”_

_“Caleb, that’s enough questions for today.”_

_“But—”_

“Kanan?”

He again tried to open his eyes and again held in a shriek at the pain. Skies, what was the damage, really?

“I’m gonna leave Chopper here,” Ezra said, slowly, as if repeating himself. Kanan was surprised to feel the press of lives around them, out beyond the hull of the _Phantom_. They’d landed already? How much had he missed in his woolgathering?

“No, take him with you,” Kanan insisted. “You’ll need the backup.”

I’m clearly not qualified for the job.

“But what if—”

“Just get what medical supplies you can,” Kanan interrupted. “I’ll be fine.”

Ezra was silent for a long moment, and Kanan risked opening his side of their connection for just a moment. Fear and sadness and guilt and pain and _anger_ threatened to swamp him in his weakened state, and he backed off.

“How badly are you hurt?” he asked, trying to examine the memory of the pain he’d just felt from his Padawan. There was too much there to understand right now.

“…My arm,” Ezra admitted finally. “When Vader destroyed my lightsaber, I landed wrong, and…” His voice firmed up stubbornly. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

Chopper was sure it was broken, but what did he know, he was just a droid, right?

Kanan snorted in attempted laughter. As if anything was funny at this point. “If you can, get it seen.”

“Right,” Ezra lied. “It’s a good way to get into the health center anyway.” He reached out and touched Kanan’s arm again, and Kanan held himself still with an effort. “We’ll be right back.”

The back door of the little shuttle swooshed up and Kanan listened to the _step-step-roll-rattle_ of the two of them descending the ramp.

“I’ll be here,” he replied blackly. The hatch closed, and he sat in the oppressive—and now silent— _dark_. “Where else am I going to go?”

********

The small collection of crates and carts was perched in the shadow of one of the larger tree corals, and had initially been decorated with holofilm posters and Sabine’s art. The large woven chair that Rex had first seen in the common area on the _Ghost_ sat beside it, bolted to the rock to prevent its liberation. The little spot was one Zeb had invited Rex to once or twice, before the invitations had become unneeded. Since its creation, it had acquired a pair of plasi chairs and a barely intact table, along with a little more art from far less talented artists. When Zeb was there, it was his, but when he wasn’t, the place was open to all.

It was a field bar—a place for a soldier to come and relax and pretend he wasn’t in the middle of a war. And as field bars went, it was better than most that Rex had seen in his days in the service of the Republic. Sitting in one of those plasi chairs, he looked out over the desert and wondered what he was going to do now.

When they had gone their separate ways, at the end of everything, Rex had thought he’d see her again. Ahsoka Tano had been his commander, and he’d been her teacher in a lot of ways. He wasn’t alone in his thoughts—most clones had looked at the padawans they helped train as something like little brothers and sisters they had to watch after.

But Ahsoka was different. Or maybe she wasn’t—maybe Grey had looked at Kanan the same way when he was training him up, before it all went to hell. But whatever… Ahsoka had been Rex’s. The only padawan he’d ever trained and the only one he’d ever wanted to.

And he’d thought he’d see her again. Hell, he still did now, even knowing she’d gone up against Vader, knowing that the temple had exploded. Force, Hera knew next to nothing about what had really happened, so it wasn’t any good for him to make up stories until he knew the truth.

Besides, Ahsoka had been buried in an explosion once before, after all, and come out fine. No need to think…

A canister of ale dropped onto the table in front of him, set there by a purple-furred hand. Zeb settled into his woven chair with a creak, and Rex drank half of the offered drink at a go.

“I should have gone after them.” The ale was bitter. Or maybe it was just him.

“You can’t second guess yourself,” Zeb replied, his own ale gone completely in one long draught. Luckily, he appeared to have more.

“The hell I can’t.” He should have gone after her—that was all there was to it. “Damn it, if they’d’ve just waited a _rotation_ , I’d’ve been here. I could’ve gone with them.”

“They wouldn’t have let you,” Zeb’s voice was the same flat and sad it had been since Hera had called them all together and filled them in on what precious little she knew about the situation. “Jedi business and all that.”

Rex drained the rest of his ale and gestured for another, as he remembered too skrogging many times General Skywalker had hied off without him. Gotten himself in too damn much trouble. There was a difference here, though. Jedi business could go hang. She shouldn’t have had any part in it. Hell, she’d said it enough times herself, hadn’t she?

“Ahsoka’s no Jedi.”

***********

_“I heard they were giving him his command back,” Caleb whispered._

_The main courtyard of the Temple was full of light, the Bidodo trees inside green and growing, drooping pink blooms nodding lazily as the world outside the windows ran its manic, technological way. Speeders and light craft sped along, threading through the spires like pearls on an ever-moving string._

_“I don’t know,” Sammo replied. The three initiates looked over at the entrance to the Masters’ quarters, where a tall red Twi’lek, his upper face hidden by a brown leather mask that covered his eyes, was walking slowly toward the doors, deep in conversation with Master Windu. “It_ is _kind of crazy, huh? I mean, he’s blind now. How’s he gonna see the enemy?”_

 _“He could if he was Miralukan,” Tai put in randomly. Her_ nibada _clinked against each other as she turned back toward her friends. Her hair had grown all the way to her waist, Caleb knew—women on her planet didn’t cut their hair until after they’d had their first child—but the metal coils kept it neat and no farther down than her shoulders, braided and rolled in the metal that winked when she moved._

_“Well he’s not, though, is he?” Sammo shot back, his lekku twitching in what Caleb read as annoyance. “We Twi’lek need eyes.”_

_“So too did the Miraluka, once.”_

_Caleb spun around to face the owner of that unexpected voice._

_“Master Kenobi,” he stammered. “We…”_

_“It’s all right,” Master Kenobi said, the easy words calming Caleb’s heart. “The Miraluka learned to see beyond their eyes, Sammo, but they were just like the rest of us, once.”_

_“Master, I have a question,” Caleb said. He’d learned to ask before he asked. It didn’t stop the masters from rolling their eyes at him, but it did make him feel like they had a chance to say no, even if they almost never did._

_Master Kenobi nodded. “It’s natural to have questions when something like this happens.”_

_“Why doesn’t he get new eyes, like Master Koon’s commander did?”_

_“Cybernetics can’t see the way a Jedi can,” Master Kenobi replied thoughtfully, which didn’t actually answer anything in the initiate’s mind. The master smiled at the questions Caleb knew were just chasing themselves across his face. “Master Kimmanaka may have lost his eyes, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still see.”_

_“It kind of does,” Tai muttered in her oh-so-blunt way._

_Master Kenobi just smiled. “Tai, your sight is only one of your senses.” She looked up at him in embarrassment. “You can function without them. You have before.” He looked over at the now-closed door, and Caleb thought he looked a little worried despite the calm discussion. “So can Master Kimmanaka.”_

_“But how?” Caleb wanted—needed—to know. Things happened in wartime, right? And he really wanted to get into this war, so… He needed to know. “Fighting against drones with a blaster shield on is one thing, but how can he… How can he see where the enemy is, or direct his troops? Or fight at all?”_

_“Not everything is a fight, Caleb,” Master Kenobi chided him, a weariness deepening his tone before he firmed it up and returned to his teaching mode. “And not everything needs to be seen. Without sight, your other senses—even your sense of the Force—can become more acute.” He was looking beyond them now, and Caleb followed his gaze to see Master Skywalker standing by the elevator to the Council’s chambers. He looked impatient._

_“But how, Master Kenobi?” Caleb asked again._

_“Caleb, that’s enough questions for today.” Master Kenobi nodded to Master Skywalker and started walking away._

_“But—”_

“How?” Kanan whispered into the Here as the clear and vivid and _visual_ There faded away, leaving him in a present that was dark and painful and endless. Ezra and Chopper had been gone a long time, checking in only once as they arrived at the medical center. He’d spent the time they were gone trying to achieve a healing trance and managing it less than half the time.

Not that a trance could give him back his eyes. If he’d only been paying better attention! Malachor had battered him with its darkness from the moment they landed. He’d been able to block it out some as Ahsoka read out the inscription, but then Ezra had touched the obelisk, like it was calling him to it.

And then the battlefield… Force, the power of that number of dead. It was as if he could sense their deaths, _feel_ their deaths. And with the inquisitors and Ezra’s absence… he’d never gotten his head right.

And look what it had cost him.

_“You can function without them. You have before.”_

He reached out a tentative hand, feeling the smooth wall plates next to him, the sharp edge of the bench that Ezra had pulled out instead of the usual jump seats. So Kanan himself could lay there, useless, as Ezra had covered his eyes.

He’d almost welcomed the painkillers Ezra hadn’t even asked permission before administering. They’d brought him silence for a while. A drugged peace, but peace all the same.

Where did he go from here?

 _“Didn’t they teach you anything useful in that temple of yours?”_ Janus’ voice was a grating memory.

“Maybe they didn’t.” But Kanan centered himself anyway and breathed.

_“Open your mind to the Force,” Yoda murmured. “See that which you cannot see.”_

It wasn’t sight. Sammo swore he could see in a weird way, but for Kanan it had never been like that at all. It was… It was just knowing where things were. And when he’d been fighting Maul—when it was Ezra’s life at stake—he could do it effortlessly. But now the adrenaline was gone, and the pain was more than he could work past…

_“But the drones are machines,” he’d said, when he was too young to understand anything—if he was even old enough now. “How can we feel them?”_

“Feel the air around them,” Kanan told himself, repeating Yoda’s words. “The Force between you and the drone.” He rose unsteadily, his leg aching where he’d slammed to the temple floor when he and Ezra had taken the holocron. _And where_ was _the holocron?_

“Between you and the wall,” he coached himself, as he turned toward the feeling of the cockpit, drawing on the memory of the path between him and it. He reached out, trailed a hand along the wall. “Between you and the—”

He tripped up the step into the cockpit, slamming into the back of the command chair hard enough to make him cry out.

“Kriff!”

He dropped to his knees, gasping in pain. He couldn’t do this—he was stupid to think he could. Master Kimmanaka? Sure. Even Zaluna…

_She’d moved through her garden effortlessly, her sightless eyes still twinkling after all she’d been through. Like blindness was nothing to worry about._

He remembered those eyes, after that blaster had exploded in her face. Bloody bits of skin and gushing tears. Did he look like that now?

No. No, because he knew he couldn’t cry anymore. His eyes had been dried out by a heat and power that surpassed a simple blaster. He remembered Depa, after Stance died, after her rematch with Grievous. Her back had been a mess of burnt skin and nearly hidden bone. No blood, no weeping sores. Just burnt and dried and damaged.

_Damaged goods._

***********

Ezra was losing his temper. Not that he’d had a very good handle on it since they’d left Atollon anyway.

He looked down at his brand new bacta cast in annoyance. His wrist was sprained, with a simple break in one of the bones in his forearm. At least it wasn’t too bad. It would likely be mostly healed in a week. The fact that he’d dislocated his elbow was actually more of a problem. The cracked bone barely stung now, but even relocated, the elbow still ached fiercely. Just like it had the last time.

_“That’ll hurt for a while, now, kid,” Juna had told him, stepping back as she finished manhandling his arm bones back into their proper positions around the joint. Ezra refused the sling she held out to him, and she sighed at his paranoia. But he couldn’t take the chance—she had to admit, walking around the streets with a sling on just screamed, “Kick me!” right?_

_“Fine,” she relented. “Just try not to get into too many fights before it heals, okay?”_

_“It’s not my fault,” he’d argued, indignant as any ten-year-old would be. “They’re the ones who always pick on me.”_

_The self-styled Mom of the Streets simply smiled. “And yet you fight only when they pick on other people. Strange.”_

_He’d grinned a little bashfully. “It’s not my fault.”_

This time, though, it was no one’s fault _but_ his. He settled his arm more comfortably, ignoring the little whine of pain he couldn’t keep in.

So, it still hurts then? Chopper asked.

“Yes, Chopper,” he grated, striding through the docks toward the slip where they’d left the _Phantom_. And Kanan. “It still hurts.”

Chopper pointed a grabber toward Ezra’s arm, commenting that the doctors must not be very good if it still hurt. Good thing they hadn’t taken Kanan to them because they were obviously no help.

Ezra flinched at the observation and looked down at the sling again, spying the booty he’d hidden in its folds. He’d managed to shove (hopefully) enough packets of painkillers and bacta gel in there as he meandered out of the medical center, and the eye bandage he’d found would (again hopefully) be better than the bacta pad currently wrapped around Kanan’s head. He didn’t know what the bacta could possibly do for Kanan’s eyes. Probably nothing. 

He shoved the image of that damage out of his mind and focused on getting back to the _Phantom_ and _home_. Maybe, for a while, they’d be safe, even after all this disaster.

While Ezra had done what he could for his master’s wounds, Kanan had gritted out the story of what happened with Maul. What happened while Ezra was off taking the bait Maul had dangled in front of him. Bait he hadn’t thought twice about, falling for it like a little kid because he’d refused to listen to reason. The other two inquisitors were dead—he still couldn’t shake the image of the Sister’s gruesome end, of Maul’s voice prodding him, guiding him, pushing him to kill her as she hung there, defenseless. And even though he hadn’t done it…

Anyway, the inquisitors were dead, Maul was… Maybe Maul was dead. Kanan hadn’t actually _seen_ what had happened. He’d never actually see again, thanks to Ezra.

Kriff, what was he gonna do?

Chopper slammed him into a nearby wall, and Ezra’s elbow erupted in pain. “Chopper!” he hissed, kicking the droid. “What was that—”

There were stormtroopers right over there, Chopper pointed out. That wasn’t good and what did he want to do, end up in jail so Hera could worry _more_!?

“They’re more likely to notice us with you slamming me into walls,” he growled. But he had to admit, the stormtroopers were exactly where they didn’t need to be.

A trio of bucketheads stood at the mouth of the dock where Kanan sat, defenseless, in the _Phantom_.

“Maybe they’re just on patrol,” he offered, as he and Chopper crept closer. “It’s a coincidence.”

The stormtrooper with the epaulet spoke to the others, clearly heard in this quieter back alley of the docks. “It _could_ be the one Command is looking for,” he told them. “No reason they’d be out here of all places, but we’d better check it out.”

“Kriff,” Ezra whispered. What were the odds they’d be spotted here, “of all places”? He couldn’t even use the comms—his voice would carry just as well as the stormtrooper’s had.

He slid the medical supplies he’d stolen into his waistpack, feeling them skitter against the Sith holocron. The holocron that, if he let himself listen, whispered and grated at him. Now, though, was not the time. He blocked it out and opened his mind to Kanan instead, hoping this time, his master would let him in.

The dulled pain and fear Kanan hadn’t quite been able to hide completely was there, but Ezra couldn’t get any farther. Not that Ezra blamed him for blocking him out completely, but it made it hard for him to actually warn the guy that the stormtroopers were coming!

His anger flared—at the situation, at himself, even at Kanan—and suddenly it was like the holocron whispered, Maul’s words coming back in the voice of the temple. Enticing.

_“Your anger is a wellspring. You must use it.”_

And just like that, Ezra knew what he had to do.

Chopper whistled, low and confused, as Ezra simply strode right up to the stormtroopers.

“What are you doing here, kid?” the trooper in charge asked.

 _“You must use it,”_ whispered the voice.

“This isn’t the ship you’re looking for,” he told the leader. The Force sang so clearly through his anger he was surprised no one else could hear it.

“It’s not the ship we’re looking for,” the leader replied as his underlings nodded their agreement.

“You need to check on the other side of the docks.” Ezra was growing cold, but he didn’t care. The patrol needed to leave, and he had the means to make them do it.

“We should get over to the other side of the docks.”

And they simply walked away.

That was even better than when Kanan does it, Chopper told him.

 _Kanan won’t be doing that anymore,_ Ezra replied silently. His head hurt and he ran his good hand up his bad arm trying to warm himself.

“Come on,” he murmured quietly. “Let’s just get home.”

*******

Kanan woke in a panic, barely aware that he’d dozed. The Force sang with a malevolence…

Instinct moved him, eyes unneeded as he rose from the bench in one fluid movement, hands reaching to his waist to assemble his lightsaber. He pivoted on the balls of his feet as the back hatch of the _Phantom_ clanked and whirred. A rush of terrestrial air and his kyber crystal sang, his saber out front and ready, not in the defensive side swipe he’d used with Maul.

He wouldn’t hide from what was coming.

It was _cold—_

“Whoa! Kanan, it’s me!”

The crystal fell silent, his blade deactivating as Ezra’s voice cut through the frigid breeze.

If you’re going to kill him, Chopper told Kanan with a clatter and a whine, do it later. Hera wants us home. The astromech tapped his leg lightly as it rolled by, toward the front of the shuttle.

His adrenaline wasted, Kanan slumped back down, barely resting on the edge of the bench, shivering. Ezra was beside him in an instant, and the cold and darkness was an abrupt memory.

“Are you okay?” Ezra asked quietly. “I’m sorry—I should’ve commed earlier. I figured you’d be resting and it took so long to get out of the medical center but—”

“It’s fine,” Kanan assured him, breaking into the monologue when it became clear Ezra wasn’t going to take a breath. He took a deep one of his own, but it didn’t center him in the least. “It’s fine, I’m just…” _Useless._

Ezra sat silent for a moment, and when he finally spoke, it was like he was fourteen again, eager to please and afraid to offend. “I brought you some painkillers. And… I think it’s a regen mask.”

 _Wounds like this don’t regenerate_ , Kanan thought morosely. But he nodded anyway. “How’s your arm?”

It’s broken, Chopper piped up, before Ezra could minimize it. And dislocated. And sprained. He’s very clumsy.

Kanan smiled in spite of himself.

“I am not,” Ezra grumbled, but there was a reluctant smile in his voice, too, and that was something. “Chopper’s right, though,” he said, clearly striving for calm. “We should go home.”

And there went the smile.

“We should probably get the mask… done,” Ezra stumbled.

Chopper would drive. He didn’t need to see that again. The droid clicked and whirred his way back out the hatch and closed it behind himself. Neither of them moved until Chopper was on the roof and starting the engines.

“Kanan,” Ezra finally whispered.

Kanan could hear the apology coming, but he wasn’t going to let Ezra take the blame for this. This was _his_ fault. He’d been off-kilter from the moment they landed on Malachor, and if he’d been more observant, been more forceful, been more of a Jedi, none of this would have happened.

“Don’t,” he said, his anger at himself making his voice sharper than he meant it to be. “I’m sorry,” he murmured after a moment. “Let’s just… get this done.”

“Yeah,” Ezra muttered.

It took a minute for Ezra to move, though; for the sound of crinkling plaswrap to be heard. Kanan tried to follow what was happening—was that smell the bacta? What was that humming sound…?

Any attempt to keep track was destroyed, though, when a tentative weight was suddenly on the edge of the bandage that wrapped Kanan’s eyes. He honestly wasn’t sure that being slammed by twin blaster beams on Kardoa had hurt this much.

“I’m sorry, I have to—” Ezra’s voice cracked, and Kanan damned himself for the whimper he couldn’t hold in.

“I know,” Kanan told him, firming up his voice with an effort. He managed to stay completely silent as Ezra stripped off the coverings, but still jumped slightly as the new wrap hooked over his ears and around his eyes. There was a welcome flush of cool anesthetics, and then it beeped quietly. As if initializing… A soft whirring carried through the wrap, over his tortured eyes.

Ezra’s breath stopped for a moment as the wrap beeped again, and Kanan finally understood. It wasn’t just a regen wrap, it was a _diagnostic_ regen wrap. He was absolutely certain of the diagnosis it had just displayed.

“You only steal the best, I see,” he drawled, trying to make light of it.

Ezra let out a sob, and Kanan damned himself for his choice of words.

“I already knew, Ezra,” he told him gently, reaching out and finding Ezra’s hand suddenly gripping his own one, _hard_. “It’s okay.”

But it really, _really_ , wasn’t.

***********

Ezra pulled himself together, and Kanan didn’t say a word as he did it. As they jumped to hyperspace. As Ezra commed Hera and told her the bare minimum: Kanan’s sight was gone and they were coming home. Ezra sat beside his master and thought of all the ways he could have _not_ destroyed so many people at once.

And Kanan wouldn’t even let him apologize. It was more than Hera’s “we’ll talk about it later.” It was like Kanan couldn’t stand to hear him try to justify himself. Which was fine, really. There was no justification for this.

He looked down at the bacta cast on his arm, then up to Kanan, whose head rested back on the bulkhead. Finally asleep again.

Quickly, quietly, Ezra stripped the skrogging thing off, leaving his arm sore and aching. At least it was something to concentrate on. And this way no one would see he was hurt and no one would try to take care of him and no one would care.

No one should care. 

He didn’t watch as they came out of hyperspace and made their way to the surface of Atollon. He didn’t feel Kanan shift uncomfortably on the bench beside him as he woke from his doze. He didn’t hear the faint hum of the holocron as it whispered nothing at him.

He was trying really hard to just… not be.

Kanan’s bracing chuff blew that idea out of the air. “We should go,” Kanan murmured, hands braced on the bench to help him push to standing. “They’ll be waiting.”

And of course, they were. Even Rex. Kanan leaned on Ezra more than Ezra would have thought he’d want to, and it was just a little too much like those moments after he’d rescued his master on Tarkin’s ship. Ezra was pretty sure if he didn’t get some time alone, he was going to shake apart himself.

Hera rushed forward as everyone else hung back—like when they’d put Kanan in the bacta tank after Mustafar. Ezra tried not to catch anyone’s eye as Hera ran her hands gently over Kanan’s face and hugged him tight, taking the weight off of Ezra, if not the burden.

He tried, but there was Rex, looking sadly hopeful. Ezra just couldn’t. He closed his eyes.

“Let’s get you to the aid station,” Hera whispered.

Ezra’s eyes shot open so he wouldn’t see the shadow on the backs of his eyelids—the readout on the side of the regen wrap: Critical failure. Sight irretrievable.

*********

“I just want to go home,” Kanan murmured. He knew he sounded broken, but he just couldn’t care at the moment. He was here, among family, and whatever happened, he wanted to be with them on their ship.

“645 can look you—” Sabine started.

“No!” Kanan stumbled as he tried to walk and protest at the same time. “No,” he repeated, quieter this time. “Can we just… get a sentient. Please?”

He could just imagine the holodroid’s assessment: _Kanan Jarrus has sustained injury to his ocular organs, caused by a lightsaber. Kanan Jarrus’s eyes have been permanently damaged. Diagnosis: Kanan Jarrus is blind._ If he had to hear it said aloud, in that perky, damned voice…. He was holding on by a thread as it was. That was _not_ going to help.

“Sure, Kanan,” Sabine murmured. “I’ll go see who’s on in the aid station.”

Kanan tried not to lean on Hera too much, though in truth, she was taller and sturdier than Ezra was. He could feel his padawan following them as Hera helped him up the ramp to the cargo bay. The kid was barely hanging on himself. Kanan turned, hand out, and banged his knuckles into the rung of the ladder.

Hera being Hera, she didn’t say a word, just let him get his bearings and start climbing. He couldn’t love her more right now if he tried.

Rex’s stunned sadness faded as they entered the ship, and Kanan was embarrassed at the flush of relief that the clone’s departure brought. He and Ezra would have to tell Rex what had happened, soon. To Ahsoka. To Master Skywalker… He wasn’t sure he could talk about that right now.

He reached the top of the ladder without further incident and made his way toward the back of the ship, feeling Ezra shear off from the group, his muted self in the Force begging for silence and solitude. Kanan said nothing, and the others were too anxious to notice.

Kanan could use some silence and solitude himself, but he knew they all needed this step over with. They all needed to hear—to try to accept—his new reality so they could move on.

So _he_ could move on.

 _Adaptation is the key to survival, right?_ he thought to himself as he, again, cracked his knuckles, this time on the control panel beside the common room door. Hera stood by him—always—and led him inside, toward the medical panel. He didn’t resist until he heard the sound of the diagnostic slab sliding out from the unit.

“I don’t need to lie down,” he assured her, stopping their forward movement. Somewhere, he came up with a smile as he remembered Depa’s words from so long ago. “Lightsabers are efficient. Only weapon that can cut off an arm and still leave you fit to fight.”

The silence around him informed him that he was the only person getting the joke.

“I don’t need to lie down,” he repeated.

Hera led him to the dejarik table instead.

*********

The ship sang. Zeb’s bed smelled overwhelming and Sabine’s paintings were garish and the holocron _whispered—_

Ezra listened at the door, his hearing an easy backup to the sharp sense of the rest of the crew in the Force as they moved through toward the common room. He couldn’t think. He… Ever since they’d landed, it was like the universe was a raw wound. No. No, ever since he’d first touched the holocron.

_“This is a Sith holocron. One that holds all their secrets.”_

“Bet those secrets don’t include how to fix this, though, do they?” he muttered.

Except maybe they did. And maybe the fix was worse than what was broken. If that was even possible.

The flood of sad and nervous and grieving energy that was his friends, led by the muted agony that had once been his master, finally hid itself behind the common room door, and Ezra dropped his pouch to the floor, staring at the soft red glow of the holocron as the light seeped out around the seams. He opened the door to his quarters, hurrying silently to the one place where he hoped he could gain some space. Calm himself.

Block out the damn whispers.

*********

“I’m sorry,” Gillion said, his rich brown eyes sad and dark face drawn into a mask that Hera was sure all human medical technicians learned in their schools—they all looked exactly the same when they did it. Their “sorry” face. “We can probably regenerate the lids, but the eyes themselves… I wish I had better news, but medical technology can only do so much.”

Which Hera had known the moment the regen mask had come off. She’d seen too many injuries during the Occupation—even some saber wounds. She knew permanent damage when she saw it.

It was clear from the look on Sabine’s face that she did, too, and she was just too young to have learned that lesson. Irony, certainly, since Hera had grown up in a war zone and Sabine had grown up a warrior, but still… Sabine’s eyes were soft and wet and hopeless and that wasn’t right.

Zeb stood quietly in the corner. He was a soldier, well versed in the costs of war. And while he looked hurt, he also looked resigned. Which could be as deadly as fear, in its own way. They couldn’t run this resistance on the kind of hopelessness she saw in them all—even in Ezra before he’d disappeared to lick his wounds.

She wasn’t sure _they’d_ be able to help run this resistance at all.

 _“Is your revenge really worth this, Father?”_ she remembered asking him, shortly before she’d left for good. _“Is defeating them more important than keeping your people—your family?”_

 _“They were the ones who took our family, Hera,”_ he’d replied, hastening her departure. _“Without victory against them, there is nothing.”_

Except there was. There was family. This family. _Her_ family.

“Thank you, Gillion,” she told him quietly.

The human knew a dismissal when he heard one and took a moment to check one of the readouts on the diagnostic wrap. She’d have to figure out how to turn off the visual display…

“Nidar will be back on the _Nyaga An_ soon,” Gillion said quietly, facing Kanan head on. Purposely. The way Hera had learned to with Zaluna so she could sense or hear that she was talking to her. “She’ll be the best to take care of any possible regeneration.”

“Thank you,” Kanan replied, his hand going out in automatic courtesy—only to smack against Gillion’s chest. Kanan tried to draw it back, but the darker human stepped back and took his hand easily, shaking it and glossing over the moment without comment.

“I’m sorry we can’t do more.”

And the intruder was gone, making his way out of the _Ghost_ and leaving the crew to deal with something they had no idea how to face.

“Do you… want to rest, Kanan?” Sabine was quiet. Holding it together because that was what she did. “Gillion left some sedatives—”

Kanan shook his head quickly, then frowned and visibly tried to regain his composure.

“I think what I need right now is to be alone,” he admitted softly, turning to the door with admirable accuracy and reaching out very carefully to open it. “I just…”

“ _We’ll_ just… need to make some adjustments,” Hera finished for him, a hand on his back in comfort as they walked into the hallway. “That’s all.”

“Yeah,” Zeb agreed, his resignation shading toward fear now, in the face of incontrovertible truth. “Yeah, we’ll… make adjustments.”

Sabine looked toward the cockpit. “Where’s Ezra?”

******* 

The query released a rush of despair and sadness from somewhere in front of him, and Kanan tried not to let his own distress color his voice. “He needs some time to himself.”

Kanan reached out a hand ahead of him until he lightly touched the rungs of the gunnery ladder without banging into it. Zeb’s distinctive smell and sound moved past him on one side and a slight disturbance that could only be Sabine slid past on the other. They’d head for their bunks. To regroup. To recover—if there was such a thing right now.

Hera’s hand was once again on his back as if she’d heard his hopeless thought, and Kanan called himself to order. They could weather this. Somehow.

Ezra’s power, muted and frightened and angry, approached.

“Ezra? Are you okay?” Hera’s voice was soft and caring, but Ezra didn’t seem to feel it.

His voice was dark. “Are any of us?”

“We will be.”

Hera’s endless determination had Kanan bowing his head in shame. _She_ could weather this, certainly. She would be all right. It was himself he was unsure of.

“Sure,” Ezra said, the sound of him moving away from her less painful than Kanan’s sudden certainty that Ezra was doing more than physically withdrawing.

“Ezra?” he called, the cold in the air something he couldn’t deny. He could dimly feel Ezra waiting, somewhere beyond the wall he’d built to protect his padawan from himself. “Don’t… Don’t make any decisions right now, okay? We’re all going to have to take some time. We need to protect each other while we do.”

 _Protect each other,_ he mocked himself. _Great job you’ve done of that._

“Ezra, we need to stick together,” Hera agreed. Her green eyes would be warm, caring, serious in their concern. “Now more than ever.”

Ezra moved away in the Force as much as he moved away physically, and Kanan shivered slightly as the door to Zeb and Ezra’s quarters snapped shut.

“The kid’ll come around,” Zeb stated, sounding not at all sure of it.

Kanan nodded, ignoring the swing of the black world around him when he did. Everything was off-kilter. He had no balance. He wasn’t sure he ever would again. “Like Hera said, we all need to make some adjustments.”

Though how they adjusted to _this_ , he had no idea. Words he’d heard Master Kenobi say more than once rang through his mind. _“All things are possible through the Force—with a fair bit of work.”_

He’d put in the work before, hadn’t he? After Order 66, Gorse, Mustafar…

He ignored the voice in his mind that asked just how many more times he should be expected to do it.

******

the end


End file.
